Case of Cigarettes
In 1998, the state of Minnesota sued Big Tobacco and won a settlement of $6.1 billion. Armed with funding from the lawsuit settlement, the Minnesota Department of Health turned
its attention (and its arsenal) from cigarette makers to cigarette marketers. Alarming increases in teen smoking rates fueled the Department's motivation. Teen smoking in
Minnesota had risen 35% over six years, starting from January 1994. Weber Shandwick Worldwide was brought on board to help strategize the state's next anti-cigarette offensive.
The goal: to reduce teen smoking by 30% by 2005.
The Strategy
How? was the challenging question. Research showed that decades of dire warnings in targeted health campaigns had not resonated with teens. "The typical 'Mr. Owl says
it's not wise to smoke' approach wasn't going to work," says Ted Johnson, account group manager at Weber Shandwick. Too patronizing.
Why not capitalize on the inherent rebelliousness of 12-17 year olds and mobilize them as activists? Taking a cue from successful youth anti-tobacco campaigns in other states,
Minnesota reframed the issue, focusing not so much on negative health effects, but rather on tobacco industry manipulation. Perhaps if teens understood the extent to which
cigarette companies attempt to "hook" them as consumers, they'd band together and fight back.
Unlike other state campaigns, however, which hinged largely on advertising, Minnesota allocated half of its $18 million budget to grassroots PR and event marketing. "We wanted
to give youth in our state a way to take action once they saw the ads," says Joe Loveland, marketing director at the Minnesota Youth Tobacco Endowment.
Seeding the Movement
Positioning the campaign as a social movement, Weber Shandwick recruited teens to participate in a "Kick Ash Bash" summit to be held in St. Cloud. In March, teen envoys wearing
sandwich boards with the URL http://www.kickashbash.com were dispatched to high school sports tournaments. As a result of this guerilla
tactic, more than 950 teens applied online to participate in the bash. "We recruited not just honor students, but snowboarders, skateboarders, smokers, ex-smokers...everybody,"
says Diana Harvey, Weber Shandwick account group supervisor. "The group of teens who smoke is very diverse and we wanted to make sure they were well-represented" she says.
Four hundred teens flocked to the inaugural Kick Ash Bash held on April 2, 2000. The event opened with a series of statements read aloud from tobacco company documents (mostly
from the 1970s). These included such inflammatory language as "the base of our business is the high school student." Outrage ensued.
Breakout sessions over the next three days trained teens in disciplines such as public policy advocacy, advertising strategy, event planning and Web development. A media
training session featured mock interviews and addressed issues related to message creation and reporter etiquette. By the end of the event, participants had collectively agreed
upon a brand name for their movement: Target Market.
The high point of the event was a cameo appearance by Governor Jesse Ventura who left a voicemail message for the CEO of Brown & Williamson imploring him to cease his
company's efforts to target teens. Event participants departed fired up, ready to put their fledgling grassroots movement into action.
From the Ground Up
Following the Kick Ash Bash, Weber Shandwick and sister agency Campbell Mithun worked with teens to launch these campaign components:
- Target Market Cruiser. Parked at various teen events and hangouts over the summer. Provided music, an interactive lounge and info about how to join the anti-tobacco
movement.
- Document Tour. An interactive trailer full of "declassified" cigarette company documents and youth-focused ads visited 28 middle schools last year . Itss scheduled
to make 30 more stops this April and May.
- Minnesota State Fair. A teen-staffed booth that recruited 1,200 new TM activists. Roughly a third (1.5 million) of the state's population attended the fair.
- Target Market Upper Midwest Snowboard Series. An event series modeled after the hip events that tobacco companies use to co-opt teens.
- Battle of the Bands/Compilation Music CD.
Ifs, Ands...No Butts
Preliminary survey research indicates that the TM movement is impacting teen attitudes about smoking. In a survey of 3,000 middle school kids who toured the "Document Truck,"
82 percent said they'd learned things about Big Tobacco that would affect their decision not to smoke. "That tells us that we're providing information that [teens] didn't already
have and that they find useful," Loveland says.
(Contacts: Ted Johnson, Diana Harvey, Weber Shandwick Minneapolis, 952/832-5000; Joe Loveland, Minnesota Department of Health, 651/261-9794.)
Teens in
Charge
Teens sat on the review committee that selected Weber Shandwick as the agency of record and have served as official spokespersons for all media interviews (with the exception
of trade press) logging more than 10 million media impressions to date. Teens - not actors - are featured in TM ads.
The Minnesota Department of Health has kept an extremely low profile. "We didn't want our name associated with it because we weren't the primary entity shaping it," Loveland
clarifies. "If the message was coming from us, we'd run the risk of having ears close up."
Facts & Figures
Campaign time frame: April 2000-2005
Agency contract: 18 months, from January 2000-June 2001, although it's been renewed for an additional six months.
TM campaign budget: $18 million (half for advertising and half for PR/event marketing).
Big Tobacco marketing budget: $8.2 billion annually
Official campaign URL: http://www.TMvoice.com
Campaign battle cry: "Target Back! To replace dead smokers, [cigarette marketers] need young smokers. Despite their claims, they're actually placing more ads than ever
in the magazines we read. They target us, we target them. Join us."