Tobacco prevention advertising: lessons from the commercial world

This paper presents observations on how commercial TV advertising usually works with young people, discusses the special circumstances using advertising as a smoking prevention tool, and suggests research to guide future efforts. It is important for prevention efforts to recognize that in everyday life many young people are not systematic decision-makers; their intentions are extremely volatile and context-dependent, and they are highly spontaneous. So trying to change their smoking risk status with a TV ad that affects their conscious intentions toward smoking may not impact how they react when someone offers to share a cigarette with them behind the garage--even if it affects how they answer a "Do you think you'll ever take up smoking?" question right after seeing the ad. Advertising is good at getting consumers to focus on products--either in creating new brands, or in keeping familiar brands foremost in mind. Advertising is also good at providing models of concrete behaviors for people to imitate. Prevention efforts need to use advertising for what it is good at, and by and large this means being very concrete. Ultimately, for research to contribute to better prevention advertising, it needs to give the people who actually create that advertising a set of vivid, compelling images of who it is they are trying to reach and what it is that moves them. Some research methods which, when done properly, can serve this function are focus groups, anthropological studies, psychographic segmentations, moment-by-moment observational measurement, improved copy-testing methodology, and grounded-theory development.