LO1: NHS Smoke free advertising campaign

NHS Smoke free advertising campaign

http://psnc.org.uk/halton-st-helens-and-knowsley-lpc/wp-content/uploads/sites/45/2013/12/FINAL-Comms-Toolkit-NHS-Health-Harms-111213.pdf

The target for this campaign is all those who smoke frequently throughout England, with the main primary audience being the two thirds of smokers who want to quit as stated by the public health of England. Additionally, this campaign is specifically targeting those who smoke in a family environment and especially in the presence of children.  

Evidently the key message of the campaign is that when smoking the damages cannot be seen and as a result this can have a severe effect on those who surround you and in this case children are represented as being susceptible to this. They may have used children to evoke strong emotions in the audience and possibly a sense of empathy towards the child as a result it would encourage them to try and quit smoking if they did or possibly help those around them.

Within this campaign several methods are used to engage the audience. Most noticeably the use of vulnerable children are used to represent the harsh consequences of smoking and as a result evoke strong emotions and lead the audience to feel epithetic and compassionate towards them. As a result of these strong emotion being developed it would result in the audience feeling that they should be more considerate if they are a smoker or if not it could result in them feeling as if they have a responsibility to make this aware to those who do.

As previously mentioned children and babies are used throughout all forms of the campaign as they strongly enforce the campaign and its message clearly in addition to having a bigger emotive impact compared to if an adult was used as they are often not portrayed to be vulnerable and susceptible. The campaign also makes use of stereotypes to reinforce the message and allow the audience to recognises and already relate to the cause. For example in the print advertisement the idea that smoke suffocates is seen throughout this is obviously denoted by the hand seemingly made from smoke that is chocking the child this has clear connotation of harm and distress consequently resulting n action being taken.

This campaign is skilfully scheduled to be released for January. The NHS has chose to do this as at this time of the year as this is when most people are trying to quit often as a result of the new year and the idea that people often make resolutions to improve there health. Therefore the NHS Smoke free campaign looks to support smokers trying to quit at this time.

In this campaign there is very little legal issues however it could be seen to have ethical issues. For example this campaign depends heavily on emotions and guilt tripping the audience into taking action this is achieved by evoking strong emotions through the use of vulnerable characters which in this instance is young children. These characters are used to create a sense empathy as all age ranges can relate to this and therefore results in this having a bigger impact across a larger audience. 

As a whole all the campaign choice of media was effective as it reached a large audience and raised awareness by 84% with 40% who saw the ads saying they were more likely to quit in addition to 37% of people who saw the ad taking some form of action, such as ordering a smoke free kit. As a result 6% of those who viewed the ad made an attempt to quit. This campaign also distributed 84,596 smoke free kits and this combined with the large campaign was effective in spreading the message and resulting in action.