If people don't care about their health...

Coming from more of a marketing background in my studies, I began thinking about the current success of anti-smoking campaigns and how to boost it. Now most ads focus more on the damages smoking causes to health (see previous post). Having asked a few smokers, I found that people aren't concerned about their health (see previous posts). Then what would they be concerned with? I came up with other potential issues that could answer this:

• image/appearance
• pollution
• family's health

As mentioned in my previous post, smoking is considered sexy. Actors and actresses promoted it in earlier years and so the public followed. What they weren't told was that smoking also caused the yellowing of teeth and nails, caused rinkles, and created bad breath. If image is what smokers are concentrating on then maybe advertise how smoking makes one appear disgusting. This is touched upon in ads such as the mouth cancer ad but as found through my interviews, most smokers think that it will never happen to them. Bad breath, rinkles, and yellowing of teeth and nails happens to ALL smokers.

Original Image: http://images-cdn01.associatedcontent.com/image/A2062/20620/300_20620.jpg
[changes have been made]


Smoking doesn't just effect the smoker. As found in my previous post, smoking harms the envioronment and wildlife also. When interviewing smokers, it was found that many do actually care for the environment and never really considered the damages smoking could cause to the earth. Raising awareness about such issues would not only help the environment but maybe even turn people off smoking.

Original Image: http://www.digital-photography-school.com/wp-content/uploads/2007/02/images/bird-photography.jpg
[changes have been made]



If one doesn't care about themself, then who would they care about? Their family. When one smokes, the people around have no choice but to breathe their smoke in - Passive smoking. Some ads have already begun concentrating on this (see previous post). By showing a smoker's child in hospital due to passive smoking, this triggers the smoker in more of an emotional way. They may not care about themself but they do care about their family.

Original Image: http://www.eyesontutorials.com/images/PhotoEffects/Sigma/tut47_TheLittleFairy/1.jpg
[changes have been made]

If ads were more varied, covering several issues rather then just focussing on the damage of health, maybe the quit response would reach a wider audience?

Would you hand your kid a cigarette?

Parents are very influencial on their children (Green et al, 1991, p.745). From personal experiences I can somewhat relate this to smoking - As a little girl I use to pretend my lollypop-stick was a cigarette when acting as a lady, as my Mum. Some of the people interviewed also agreed that their parents did contribute to their starting of smoking, especially mothers. Graham states that mothers' play a powerful influence on childrens' smoking behaviour (1987, p.47). If smoking is so bad on health, why would a mother want their child smoking? They don't, as mentioned by smoking mothers who participated in interviews. Then if a parent smoking influences a child to smoke, does it not make sense to quit? Although irrelevant to smoking, I find that the concept of the advertisement below would be useful if applied in a anti-smoking campaign. Here ads could better demonstrate the impact smoking has on their children.




Another issue is passive smoking. Passive smoking dramatically impacts childrens' health (Knight et al, 1996, p.446). Quitline has started focussing on this issue (see image below). By focussing on the children and family, rather than on the smoker, anti-smoking commercials could better reach parent smokers.

                                           

Image: http://www.who.int/tobacco/healthwarningsdatabase/tobacco_medium_australia_children_02_b_en/en/index.html
References:
- Graham, H. 1987, 'Women's smoking and family health' in Social Science & Medicine, Vol.25, No., pp.47-56, Accessed 30/09/2010, http://www.sciencedirect.com/
- Green, G., Macintyre, S., West, P. & Ecob, R. 1991, 'Like parent like child? Associations between drinking and smoking behaviour of parents and their children' in British Journal of Addiction, Vol.86, No.6, pp.745-758, Accessed 30/09/2010, http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/
- Knight, J.M., Eliopoulos, C., Klein, J., Greenwald, M. & Koren, G. 1996,'Passive Smoking in Children' in Chest, Vol.109, No.2, pp.446-450, Accessed 30/09/2010, http://chestjournal.chestpubs.org/