Storytelling Channels and Aspects

Traditional (phone/post office)- Pauline
Web site- Mike
New digital/social media- catriona
Market/Public visibility- margaret
Other- Hailey

The 8 P's of Social Marketing

Product: The Truth Campaign does not want to tell people what to think, they give the audience the cold hard facts in hopes that this will educate them enough to make their own decision to stop smoking.

Price: Hopefully, the audience will quit smoking and rise against the tobacco industry.

Promotion: The campaign uses television ads to reveal facts about the tobacco industry. On their Youtube page they encourage their viewers to create their own versions of their ads and to post them. By asking people’s opinions on the tobacco industry in front of the camera, and by asking them to create their own videos and talk about it, people start talking about their problems with it and begin to realize how upset they really are. In their ads and posters they never tell people not to smoke, because this would elicit a rebellious reaction, where teenagers would smoke to spite the ads. Sometimes there are other opportunities to score apparel – so follow them on Facebook, Twitter or Instagram. On their website they have interviews with bands to promote their messages.

Partnership and Public: They team up with concert tours such as Vans Warped Tour, participate in Uproar and Six Flag concerts, and tour skate parks and the like. When at these events they set up their big orange trucks, and give away free hats, t-shirts and other gear. They also provide free concerts for universities, and free meet and greets with the bands that play at them. These bands also do interviews for Truth’s website.  This encourages a huge amount of attendance to their events, and here they promote their campaign. People of this age are at a high risk of becoming smokers, and so they are targeting university students. They say that those that smoke are often doing it in rebellion, which is also how many people view those that go to skate parks and vans warped tour kind of events (the general teenage population) and so by attending these events they are reaching out directly to their target audience.

They ask that you use share their Facebook posts, Youtube videos, and tweets to spread the word, but if you want to get more involved they provide an email address from which they can provide you information on contacts in your community that could help you bring awareness to your home.

Place and Purse Strings: 46 states, the District of Columbia and 5 U.S. territories got together and sued the major tobacco companies to try to recover some of the billions of dollars spent caring for sick smokers. The tobacco companies settled out of court, signing an agreement to pay the states a certain amount of money, and the states then funded The American Legacy Foundation with a very small portion of that money. The American Legacy Foundation, which provides strategic direction and funding for the truth campaign, received in 2003 what is likely its final payment to the National Public Education Fund established by the Master Settlement Agreement. Despite its success, the truth campaign now faces an unprecedented funding challenge. You can volunteer to be a part of their tours or donate to their cause. 

Policy: The Truth Campaign was developed by the government, and so they are not trying to create a policy change. There are no policies that have been enacted, but they have been reaching their goal of making people understand that the tobacco industry is not honest.

Reaching the Goals

"the truth" campaign emphasizes its use of positive marketing and uses this strategy to its advantage when addressing their audience.

• using positive marketing via social media has proven to be effective on changing behavior on a population level

Adolescents have an urge for independence, rebellion and personal control and the truth relates to them through images of appealing lifestyles that do not including using tobacco products.

• 80% of smokers start before age 18, so the truth targets ages 12-17

Effective? 

• it has been statistically shown that the number of smokers in the youth population decreased by 450,000 in the first four years
• in the first two years, the truth saved our country somewhere between $1.9 and $5.4 billion in Healthcare costs

TRUTH Campaign: Goals

"Our only goal is to make sure everyone gets the unfiltered, unadulterated facts about tobacco."

http://www.thetruth.com/

This is the TRUTH campaign's one, simple, clear goal. There is no desired behavior. TRUTH looks to provide unbiased information about the tobacco industry to reveal the truth about big tobacco. They believe that telling people not to do things just makes them do the thing you are trying to convince them not to do. The campaign does not take a position as either smoking or anti-smoking, the main goal is to expose big tobacco. 

News/PR Covering the Truth Campaign

USA Today
FDA launches educational campaign to prevent at-risk kids from becoming life-long smokers. 
http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2014/02/04/fda-anti-smoking-ads/5186731/


The FDA is launching an $115M dollar media campaign to regulate tobacco and curb tobacco use among at-risk teens. This new campaign stems from the effort of the FDA’s new authority to regulate tobacco, and the “truth” campaign will be one of the three major anti-smoking efforts this year. The truth campaign has been credited with preventing 450,000 young people from smoking between 2000 and 2004.

Nations Health 

 Anti-Smoking Campaign Lowers Youth Smoking Rates With "Truth" Funding Threatened

http://www.medscape.com/viewarticle/502009

The only nationwide, independent youth anti-tobacco campaign in the United States, The Truth Campaign, is in on the verge of losing its funding, despite a news study showing the campaign is directly responsible for declines in youth smoking rates. According to a study from the APHA’s American Journal of Public Health, the “Truth” campaign is not only responsible for declines, but is accelerating such declines, from an annual smoking decline by about 3 percent before the campaign, to a decline of almost 7 percent after the campaign. In order to fight for the campaign funding, the Citizens’ Commission to Protect the Truth” has been created. This commission believes that any significant cutback in truth combined with the decrease in funding at the state level will inevitably result in a reversal of the positive smoking trends that have been seen- a national tragedy for the nation’s health. 

The Future of Children 

The Power of Positive Marketing

http://futureofchildren.org/futureofchildren/publications/highlights/18_01_highlights_08.pdf

Marketing in electronic media is powerful and can shape behavior of children and youth. Adolescents who watched more than five hours of TV a day, for instance, were almost six times more likely to start smoking than those who watched two hours or less a day. Although TV watching can be related to certain negative consequences in child behavior, research examining social marketing campaigns suggests that media can also be a powerful tool in promoting healthy behavior and preventing risky behavior among children and adolescents. The success of the “Truth” campaign has been an example of this- the decline in youth smoking this campaign is responsible for is close to 300,000 fewer youth smokers. 

First Blog Post

Margaret Nealon mknealon@uvm.edu
Catriana Whalley cwhalley@uvm.edu
Mike Abbott mabott1@uvm.edu
Hailey Ronconi hronconi@uvm.edu
Pauline Morris pmorris@uvm.edu

Will we be getting more group members for the last two questions?

Our organization- TRUTH

Questions
1. Mike
2. Catriana
3. Margaret
4. Hailey
5. Pauline
6.