The CDC’s ‘Tips From Former Smokers’ Media Campaign Works — Let’s Build On Its Successes
Hard-hitting ads are effective in getting smokers to quit
Nicotine is an addictive drug. Most smokers want to stop and every year about half try to quit. People often make multiple attempts before they quit for good.
One of the best ways to help people quit is with public health campaigns about the health harms of smoking. As with all campaigns, consistent and persistent messaging is key to cumulative and lasting impact. The more people are exposed to consistent messaging that appeals to their emotions, the more likely it will stick and inspire action.
The CDC’s ‘Tips From Former Smokers’ campaign, started in 2012 and run regularly since, has been very successful getting people to quit. Having real people tell their own stories about how smoking caused them disability motivated an estimated 16.4 million quit attempts in the first six years of the campaign, leading to least a million smokers quitting and saving as many as 500,000 lives.
Some have recently questioned the Tips campaign’s approach of using hard-hitting, emotionally charged ads to highlight the harms of smoking. CDC’s Tips campaign got the science and practice right.
As the Tips campaign was developed, ad concepts and messaging were tested meticulously. This research showed that seeing smokers talk frankly about how smoking affected them and their families was more effective than other messages aimed at encouraging people to quit. Follow-up concept testing in 2017 confirmed that this approach continued to have the greatest impact on viewers, and studies done for every campaign continue to use data to drive success.
Recent research validates the effectiveness of the Tips campaign. During periods the TV ads were running, calls to smoking quitlines spiked, generating more than 2 million additional calls compared to times the campaign was not airing. Quitlines increase overall quit attempts by about 60%, and about 20% of quit attempts result in sustained cessation at 90 days.
The more times smokers see one of the Tips ads, the more likely they will make a quit attempt and the more likely they will avoid relapse. This dose-response relationship demonstrates how important investment in these educational campaigns are, and demonstrates that continued investment in the Tips campaign helps smokers quit for good.
In its first six years, the Tips campaign saved $7.3 billion in health care costs — a 15:1 return on the investment. The cost-effectiveness of this program shows how much money can be saved with continued investment in mass media health education campaigns such as Tips. Of course, the most important reason to continue this program is that it saves lives.
Although other types of messaging have been hypothesized as useful, the approach used by the Tips campaign is proven to work.
