Page 65 - Social Marketing for Public Health Global Trends and Success Stories

57977_CH02_final.qxd:Cheng 11/5/09 4:36 PM Page 38

38 CHAPTER 2 ■ Reducing Tobacco Use in the United States

addictiveness, and ingredients/additives of tobacco. The style and tone
are “in-your-face” and hard-hitting, responding to teens’ desire for powerful
messages that display courage and honesty in a forceful way. To ensure that
truth® is relevant to teens, teens are involved in testing advertising concepts
and are encouraged to provide suggestions and feedback through the truth®
Web site at http://www.thetruth.com/.
Messages supporting knowledge and belief objectives have included:

• Sodium hydroxide is a caustic compound found in hair removal
products. It’s also found in cigarettes.
• Tobacco companies’ products kill 36,000 people every month.
That’s more lives thrown away than there are public garbage cans in
New York City.
• Human sweat contains urea and ammonia. So do cigarettes.
• Benzene, arsenic, and cyanide are all poisons. They’re all in cigarette
smoke, too (NCI, 2001).
• There are more than 5 million deaths worldwide from smoking each year
(WHO, 2005).

Messengers

Clearly, the key messengers for the truth® Campaign are youth, appearing in
most ads, on Web sites, sharing information through social networking sites,
and sharing information at grassroots events throughout the country. The cam-
paign is designed to be peer-to-peer, so many of the campaign’s elements can be
passed on and shared with friends.

Media Channels

truth® advertising reaches a broad audience with multicultural messages.
The truth® Campaign is everywhere in youth media—on television net-
works popular with teens like MTV, BET, G4, The N, Fuel, VH1, and fuse.
truth® plays in cinemas, in advertising before movies. truth® also has a
prominent presence on the Internet with its highly interactive and relevant-
to-teens Web site, www.thetruth.com, that allows teens to engage with truth®
on their own terms, as well as profiles on popular social networking sites
like MySpace, Bebo, and Hi5. Box 2-1 provides a chronology of truth®
Campaign themes.