The U.S. Food & Drug Administration (FDA) started The Real Cost Campaign to prevent teens and young adults from using tobacco. In 2016, the campaign narrowed in on smokeless tobacco use and launched a commercial that emphasized the negative effects of chewing tobacco. It sent a message that “Smokeless doesn’t mean harmless,”.The purpose of this commercial was to show young people the ugly risks of chewing tobacco and make them more a reality.
The Real Cost campaign has proven successful and has won two Effie Awards. There are two review articles supporting this. The first was a systematic review by the Center for Disease Control (CDC) that assessed the relationship between the campaign and smoking initiation in adolescents from 2014-2016 (Farrelly et al, 2017). In this cohort study, researchers randomly selected adolescents, ages 11-16, from 75 different U.S. media platforms. They conducted an initial interview, baseline survey, and three-year follow up survey after campaign exposure. They found that those highly exposed to the campaign had a 30% decrease risk of smoking initiation. They also concluded that those who reported having never smoked had a 70% decreased odd of smoking after high campaign exposure.
Secondly, there was another systemic review published by the Journal of Health Communication that looked at adolescent’s receptivity toward the campaign and how effective it was in changing youth’s opinions about tobacco (Zhao et al, 2016). A sample of 3,258 adolescents, ages 13-17, were randomly selected to be in a group receiving ads or a control group. Researchers found that the average effectiveness score reported was 3.66, on a 1 to 5 scale. Additionally, those exposed to the ads had significantly more negative attitudes toward smoking and believed it posed health risks and a decrease in life quality. Overall, these two review articles show that the campaign was effective in decreasing the number of adolescents that use tobacco products and in changing the attitudes around tobacco.
- Farrelly, M. C., Duke, J. C., Nonnemaker, J., Macmonegle, A. J., Alexander, T. N., Zhao, X., . . . Allen, J. A. (2017). Association Between The Real Cost Media Campaign and Smoking Initiation Among Youths — United States, 2014–2016. MMWR. Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report,66(02), 47-50. doi:10.15585/mmwr.mm6602a2
- ZHAO, X., ALEXANDER, T. N., HOFFMAN, L., JONES, C., DELAHANTY, J., WALKER, M., … TALBERT, E. (2016). Youth Receptivity to FDA’s The Real Cost Tobacco Prevention Campaign: Evidence From Message Pretesting. Journal of Health Communication, 21(11), 1153–1160. http://doi.org/10.1080/10810730.2016.1233307
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