Unfriending" smoking: a Facebook-based social marketing campaign"

Social Marketing: Anti-Smoking

Smoking - Social Marketing

Social marketing: 'Unfriending' smoking through a Facebook campaign

Conduct a situational analysis 'If your friend jumped off of a bridge, would you do it?' Perhaps the sobering answer to that question is not simply 'yes,' but that 'if my friend, or my friend's friend did so, I just might take the leap.' In the article "Are your friends making you fat," the authors of the book Connected: The surprising power of our social networks and how they shape our lives reported to the New York Times that social networks have a profound effect on the personal decisions human beings make, spanning everything from when they get married to how much they eat at a buffet-style restaurant (Thompson, 2009, p.1). One clear, measurable impact of social networks is the normalization of certain habits and social behaviors that affect human health, including smoking.

While smoking is a physical addiction, the delights of smoking have many salient features that transcend the biologically compelling nature of nicotine. The allure of striking the match, the satisfying smack of the pack on the smoker's wrist, the seductive blue rings of smoke that escape from a person's lips -- all of these demonstrate that smoking is compelling as a habit in ways that cannot always be easily quelled with a pill and which, to some degree, require a certain level of social normalization (Kessler, 2009, p.199). Smoking must be tolerated by the person's family and friends to be truly pleasurable. If the smoker can no longer share a puff with others, and the answer to the question 'can I smoke' relegates him or her outside in the cold, the delights of smoking began to be outweighed by the difficulties incurred by smoking, and the level of explicit or implicit social disapproval felt by the smoker.

A person must want to quit, and often the reasons for a person quitting smoking are very personal in origin. But smoking, like all addictive behaviors, is at least partially a social phenomenon. And it could be argued that the decision to begin smoking is an entirely social phenomenon, as without the support of friends as well as the encouragement of advertising, few would think to put tobacco in a piece of paper, light a match and inhale. However, up until now, anti-smoking campaigns have treated smoking as an individual physical compulsion and a disease. They have targeted the individual, rather than social communities. The negative health benefits of smoking are stressed, and smoker's cravings are treated with nicotine patches. "4,000 toxic chemicals leave a stench no perfume can mask... just ask the people around you. Please stop smoking, You'll smell better instantly. Call [HIDDEN] " read the text of one recent campaign (Gilford 2008)

The media has had an undeniable contributing factor to smoking. In the 1940s, a popular film "Now, voyager" depicted the hero seducing the heroine by lighting two cigarettes against his lips, and giving her one of the lit cigarettes. Sexy women and bad-boy males smoked in the 1950s. Smoking was seen as a sign of female liberation as early as the era of the flapper in the 20s, as 'nice' girls were not supposed to smoke. During the 1960s and 1970s, Virginia Slims capitalized upon the women's liberation movement by proclaiming 'you've come a long way baby' -- a long way, an anti-smoking advocate might say, to getting cancer at the same rates as males. (Toll & Ling 2009). In fact, evidence suggests that women may be more susceptible to the negative effects of nicotine than males despite the fact that fewer women smoke than men, although the disparity between the genders is shrinking (Smoking and women fact sheet, 2009, ALA). Yet the Virginia Slims cigarette brand was seen as so iconic and integral to feminism, it even sponsored the popular women's tennis tour, lead by pioneering tennis star Billie Jean King (Favorito 2009). This further normalized smoking, associating it with health as well as modern attitudes.

Awareness about the risks of smoking has also come a long way. Social shaping can often have a more powerful and immediate impact than traditional media-driven campaigns. In the Framingham Heart Study, chronicled in Connected, people slowly, even unwillingly quit smoking as their friends did, partially due to logistical difficulties. "I would take myself to Friendly's with a book, and I would sit there and have two cups of coffee and two cigarettes," said one woman. "At the time, her cigarette habit didn't seem like a problem; most of her friends also smoked socially. But in the late 1980s, a few of them began to quit, and pretty soon Eileen felt awkward holding a cigarette off to one side when out at a restaurant. She quit, too, and within a few years nobody she knew smoked anymore" (Thomas 2009, p.1).

This suggests that social forces have a tremendous impact on behavior as much as generic slogans -- although awareness campaigns may impact some individuals, those individuals must sow the seeds of healthy behaviors in their friends for campaigns truly have a widespread positive impact. "By analyzing the Framingham data, Christakis and Fowler say, they have for the first time found some solid basis for a potentially powerful theory in epidemiology: that good behaviors -- like quitting smoking or staying slender or being happy -- pass from friend to friend almost as if they were contagious viruses. The Framingham participants, the data suggested, influenced one another's health just by socializing. And the same was true of bad behaviors -- clusters of friends appeared to 'infect' each other with obesity, unhappiness and smoking" (Thomas 2009, p.2). Normalization of everything from child-bearing to eating too much -- to smoking, was passed along through social modeling.

Step 3: Set objectives and goals

Specifically, the desired objective of the Facebook/Twitter campaign is to get teens to stop smoking that have begun to smoke, and to stop teens from starting to smoke who do smoke by increasing teen awareness about the consequences of smoking in a way that makes them want to influence their friends to do the same. On a more specific level, the campaign also strives to make smoking 'uncool' and encourage teens to 'unfriend' and 'unlike' smoking, including social smoking.

Many teens ages 14 to 17 may not yet have the freedom or financial resources to be hard-core smokers, but they can adopt social smoking behavior, imitating older teens and parents, as well as media figures. Social smoking can spiral into actual addiction. Teens need to come to believe that smoking is uncool. One advertiser notes, in support of Internet-driven antismoking campaigns: "Small closely connected groups will result in [more effective] behavioral changes," than messages targeted at larger audiences, because small groups working together on a media site feel a personal investment in one another's success and behavior (Quit smoking with social networks, 2009, Social media trader). Only then do they strive to influence family members and friends in the real world to change.

Step 4: Analyze target audiences and the competition

In contrast to teens growing up in previous decades, teens today, thanks to school and television educational programs are at least intellectually or theoretically aware that smoking is bad (Smoking and teens fact sheet, 2009, ALA). They may not fully appreciate the health risks of smoking, which include heart disease as well as lung cancer and emphysema. They may also not understand that smoking can exacerbate current health conditions, like diabetes. They may be vaguely aware of the fact that smoking is unaesthetic, and also harms the teeth and gums. They may or may not know the extent of the risks of second hand smoke (Smoking and teens fact sheet, 2009, ALA). This is critical as even teens who do not smoke may be unwilling to tell their friends to 'quit it' when they light up in a car, or go to a smoky club.

Teens may be less apt to perceive the health benefits of quitting, especially if they suffer no immediate negative health consequences, although some teens might experience coughing, retching in the morning, and shortness of breath. However, some girls may fear gaining weight and perceive weight gain as a barrier. They may fear gaining weight in the short run more than the health benefits (including increased endurance during exercise, which promotes weight loss) in the long run because of the nature of teen risk perception (Inside the teenage brain, 2002, PBS).

Some teens who are contemplating quitting may fear alienating their friends, and losing a self-affirming social network. The usefulness of a teen-friendly medium like Facebook is that it has fewer associations with parental obedience than a traditional public health message by the government. While the costs of smoking themselves weigh on teen's minds, the perceived 'costs' of being alone or seeming to please one's parents must be taken into consideration when constructing the campaign. This would be one advantage to having a separate, Twitter-based campaign for teen parents, to separate the 'Unfriend' smoking campaign targeting teens.

Step 5: Develop marketing strategies

The core product will be a Facebook campaign in favor of smoking cessation. There will a persona on Facebook that teens can become a 'friend' of, and teens can also become a part of an 'Against Smoking' network of friends. Friends can also pledge to stop smoking and become a 'fan' of the site 'Against Smoking: Unfriend Smoking.' Teens trying to quit will be able to post how long they have quit on their 'walls' through the use of applications they 'allow.' Friends and fans will pledge not to 'favorite' any pro-tobacco products or logos. This will create a socially rewarding network of individuals wishing to abandon a negative behavior.

The 'Unfriend Smoking' campaign will also offer logos that users can paste on their personal pages, such as 'I have been -- days/weeks/months/years without a cigarette,' 'xx/xx/xxx is my nonsmoking birthday' and games that allow people to 'bust the smoker' along the lines of other popular Facebook games like Bejeweled Blitz. These will counteract the media campaigns of cigarette companies. Additionally, applications can be created to show teens how much money they can save by quitting smoking. This campaign will be relatively low-cost, given that it is virtual, rather than paper-based, and the main expense will be the labor costs of maintaining the application after it is created. It is also convenient, as it can be accessed every time someone logs into Facebook. The key message it would convey is that smoking is not cool, and it socially alienates a teen from his or her peer group, as well as has a negative impact upon the teen's financial and physical future. The promised benefits for the teen are money saved, greater attractiveness and energy, as well as greater social acceptability and healthy. The tone of the ad will be hip, fun, and teen-friendly

Step 6: Develop and plan for evaluating and monitoring

The most obvious evaluation of the plan's success will be the ability to see how many individuals 'friend' the 'Against Smoking' persona on Facebook, and become a 'fan' of the site 'Against Smoking: Unfriend Smoking.' The site can be monitored to see how many active, as opposed to one-time users deploy the application. And to measure real attempts to quit, specific use of applications such as the 'I have spend x days/weeks/years' without a cigarette can be tracked. Questionnaires can also be submitted to 'friends' about the site's usefulness as well as their smoking behavior. Positive feedback, such as the fact that a certain number of teens have gone a month, two months, or a year without smoking, can also be 'Tweeted' on the more parent-focused Twitter account.

Step 7: Determine budgets and find funding sources

The federal government is one of the leading sources of anti-smoking marketing campaigns, along with the American Heart and Lung Associations. These stalwart organizations would clearly appreciate a new audience amongst the young. Facebook, in an effort to show it is public-spirited as well as profitable, could act in conjunction with government agencies and non-profits. Also, the costs of creating the applications and page would be relatively low, compared with print or filmed advertising.

Step 8: Complete an implementation plan

The great advantage to a Facebook media campaign is that once the 'Unfriend Smoking' page and persona are created, and the corresponding Twitter account with a similar username, the site can be flexible to the needs of the community. There is no need for a phased campaign, as messages can be tweaked seasonally (such as the beginning of the school year or holiday-driven campaigns) and also altered to include new scientific evidence that supports is message. 'Unfriending Smoking' on Facebook can be a lasting, rather than a fleeting ad campaign.