Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids

There are quite a lot of different anti-tobacco campaigns all over the world. I do not drink alcohol and do not smoke. I hate smoke actually, especially be smoked. So I paid attention to the anti-tobacco campaigns around me and, indeed, I have figured out the pros and cons of different types of campaigns.

Website Link: http://www.tobaccofreekids.org/

It is widely accepted that fear appeals are effective in presenting anti-tobacco theme advertising. However, in one research I did with my mentor, we found that the fear appeal can not effectively convince the tobacco users but, actually, annoy them. In our research, we pointed out that fear appeal, mostly, shorten the time that the audience keep his/her eye on the advertisement. Thus, the information in ad that can successfully reach the audience is very limited. We also find out that tobacco users have very strong resistance against anti-tobacco ads. Because of this resistance, fear appeal can not arise their guilty in deep heart but only can piss them off.

So we recommend that anti-tobacco ads should come up with more moderate way of persuasion rather than simply scare the tobacco users. The "Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids" is doing a good job in this field. Checking their website, you will find that, though the theme is let kids free of smoking, their target group are adults, especially who are smoking. The picture, color or literature on the website is showing a neutural trend, not agressive, which could be very helpful in convincing the target group rationally and narratively.