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Critique of MTV Europe: “Youth Smoking Prevention” Campaign, sponsored by BAT, Philip Morris and Japan Tobacco International.
Background:
British American Tobacco, Philip Morris and Japan Tobacco International are spending $3.6m (approx £2.4m) on an advertising campaign on MTV Europe, which they say is designed to persuade teenagers (the target group is 12-17 year olds) not to smoke. MTV Europe is shown in 38 European area countries, and is largely youth- focused. The campaign was launched in April 2001, and ran until July 15. The campaign was split into two parts – a 42 day “Part 1”, with 20-40 ads per day, and a 56 day “Part 2”, with 10-20 ads showing per day. In each of the slots, one of six short films is shown which depict European teenagers doing normal, “cool” teenage activities, while being non-smokers. The companies state that the intention behind the advertisements is to persuade teenager that it is possible to be cool and popular without smoking.
The launch of the campaign was very highly publicised – copies of promotional materials were distributed to a wide-range of opinion formers, including all Members of Parliament, MEPs and the Press. These materials set out the prevalence of teenage smoking in the countries to be covered, and set itself up as a solution to this. The campaign also received a considerable amount of publicity, with coverage in both the national daily newspapers and the marketing trade journals.
Linked to the MTV campaign, the sponsor tobacco companies have set up a website ([login to view URL]) which was billed in the promotional literature accompanying the campaign as being a major resource for the prevention of underage smoking. However, at the time of writing (22 August) this site contains no more than 4 paragraphs of text describing the MTV campaign, and with no information about combating youth smoking.
This document is an evaluation of the effectiveness of this campaign. It examines the campaign’s effectiveness from two points of view. Firstly, whether the messages being used in the campaign are likely to be appropriate or effective in changing the behaviour of the target audience. The answer of the question is a resounding “no”. Not only are the messages chosen by the tobacco companies to communicate their non smoking message very unlikely to affect young people’s behaviour, but even if the message was effective, it is not getting through to a significant proportion of the target audience because of the campaign strategy chosen.
Message Development and Strategy
The approach used by the tobacco industry in this campaign is that “It is possible to be cool and not smoke”. In a letter to Clive Bates, Director of ASH, Michael Prideaux, BAT’s Corporate and Regulatory Affairs Director, explained this strategy in the following terms:
“Youth is not receptive to messages that they see as “adults telling them what to do”. Youth does unfortunately believe that “smoking is cool” and that it is entirely socially acceptable in their world. [...] Researchers tried a number of different messages, e.g. “don’t follow the herd”, and “why not spend your money on other things”, etc. The only message that worked was that there are many different ways to be cool, and that you can be cool and not smoke.”
This decision, according to Mr Prideaux, was taken as a result of research undertaken in Portugal on similar campaigns – young people in focus groups were presented with a number of different possible messages for an advertising campaign, and asked to chose which one they felt would be most likely to stop them smoking. While on the surface this appears to be a reasonable (and reasonably effective) approach to take, the response which will be received depends entirely on which options are presented to the young people – there is no guarantee that the focus groups will do anything other than pick the best of a bad bunch. Previous research has shown that one of the most effective approaches to tackling young people’s smoking is to confront them with the health effects of smoking. The 2000 Health Development Agency report “A Breath of Fresh Air: Tackling Smoking Through the Media”,[i] described research carried out in 1997 by the Centre for Social Marketing on young people’s attitudes to smoking. This research suggested that young smokers held a set of beliefs and attitudes about smoking that were crucial to understanding any mass media campaign aimed at changing their behaviour. Central to this set of beliefs was a view that smoking:
“was just one of life’s many risks and was a risk they were prepared to accept. There was little real understanding among younger smokers of the magnitude of the health risks actually compared with each other. [...] Younger smokers seriously underestimated the addictive nature of nicotine. Most believed they could give up easily if, or when, they wanted to.” (p31)
As a result of this research, the HDA concluded, when developing its next campaign aimed at cutting down youth smoking, that
“any mass media campaign needed to challenge young smokers to think about their reasons for smoking and give them reasons to quit.” They felt that, for the campaign to be most effective, “it should make the health-risk messages seem personally relevant for young smokers” (p32).
They concluded that the most effective message to give to young smokers was that smoking could kill them, and that the damage was being done while they smoked now, rather than at some undefined point in the future. This view was borne out by the success of this campaign.
The experience of the HDA is very different to that of the tobacco industry when setting up the current campaign. In their focus group research for this campaign, while it is true that they tried out several different messages in focus group testing for the MTV campaign, the adverse health effects of smoking was not one of the tested strategies[ii]. At best, this might be due to the understandable reluctance of the tobacco industry to draw attention to the diseases caused by smoking in advertising which it is paying for. However, it may also be that the tobacco companies
deliberately did not use the most effective message for their advertising in order to minimise its effectiveness.
In fact, the focus group which the tobacco industry is carrying out to assess the effectiveness of this campaign does not even attempt to establish whether it has been successful in changing either the attitudes or the behaviour of its intended audience. In a letter to John Connolly of ASH, BAT’s Adrian Marshall admits that “no research has been undertaken to see whether the advertisements by themselves led directly to a child’s decision not to smoke or to stop smoking”. They have also said that they do not intend to undertake any such research in the future. BAT’s stated reason for this is that it is very difficult to establish what role the advertising has had in any decisions to quit smoking. It is true that there are many factors which influence teenagers’ decisions whether or not to smoke, and that advertising campaigns are only one of these. However, it is difficult to see what other form of evaluation of the success of this (or any) campaign would deliver useful results as to its success or otherwise. Their evaluation of the campaign focuses on young people’s awareness and understanding of the campaign’s message, rather than the likelihood of the adverts changing behaviour.
In addition, serious doubts remain as to whether a single-medium campaign such as this is the best way to attempt to change the behaviour of such a diverse group as all 12-17 year old smokers in 38 countries. This target audience is remarkably diverse, and a message which may work for one section of the audience may well not work for another. Equally, mass advertising of this sort might be too broad in scope to appeal to any you people’s values effectively. It is interesting that it appears no research was carried out on the target audience’s demographic breakdown ahead of the campaign, as advertising can only really be targeted effectively after this information is known. Even if we accept that the message “you can be cool and not smoke” is going to be effective in persuading young smokers to quit, or stop non- smokers from starting, it is extremely debatable whether a relatively low key campaign such as this one could ever hope to change the prevailing culture among the target audience that smoking is cool. Health promoters have been trying to challenge teenage social norms and perceptions of smoking for decades. They have found that this is extremely difficult to do well, and very easy to do badly. This would require a long-term cultural change which could be addressed through a mass-media campaign, but only in the context of a wider tobacco control strategy, which would also need to include a ban on the advertising of cigarettes. The tobacco industry remains opposed to the banning of advertising, but it is this advertising which does a lot to determine teenagers’ perceptions of smoking.
[i] “A Breath of Fresh Air: Tackling Smoking Through the Media”, Health Development Agency, 2000.
[ii] The following alternative messages were tested: “Testimonials” – role models telling children not to smoke; “Smoking makes you unattractive to the opposite sex”; “Smoking is uncool”; “Peer Pressure – Don’t follow the herd” and “Cost – there are better things to spend your money on”. [iii] The Health Development Agency’s “Testimonials” campaign in 1998/99 cost £2.72m.