Designing a tobacco counter-marketing campaign for African American youth.

The objectives of this qualitative study were to: a) identify common marketing themes and tactics used by the tobacco industry to entice African Americans (AA's) and youth to initiate and maintain smoking behavior, especially smoking mentholated brands of cigarettes, and b) determine AA youths' knowledge, attitudes, intentions, and beliefs about smoking and the tobacco industry. Together, these activities could aid in the development of effective tobacco counter-marketing campaigns for AA youth. Using publicly available tobacco industry documents, computerized searches using standardized keywords were run and results were cataloged and analyzed thematically. Subsequently, 5 focus groups were conducted with n = 28 AA middle school-aged youth. Results suggest that the tobacco industry consistently recruited new AA smokers through a variety of means, including social and behavioral marketing studies and targeted media and promotional campaigns in predominantly AA, urban, and low income areas. AA youth interviewed in this study were largely unaware of these tactics, and reacted negatively against the industry upon learning of them. Youth tended to externalize control over tobacco, especially within the AA community. In designing a counter-marketing campaign for this population, partnering knowledge of tobacco industry practices with youth needs and community resources will likely increase their effectiveness.

Avoiding the boomerang: testing the relative effectiveness of antidrug public service announcements before a national campaign.

OBJECTIVES: This study examined the relative perceived effectiveness of 30 antidrug public service announcements (PSAs) and assessed the extent to which judgments of effectiveness are related to judgments of realism, amount learned, and positive and negative emotional responses. METHODS: Data were obtained from 3608 students in grades 5 through 12 in 10 schools. The ethnically diverse sample was 50.8% male. Students in 5 experimental conditions viewed sets of 6 antidrug PSAs and filled out a brief evaluation questionnaire following each PSA. Those in the control condition viewed a non-drug-related television program. RESULTS: The relative perceived effectiveness of the 30 PSAs varied considerably. Sixteen were rated as significantly more effective, and 6 as significantly less effective, than the control program. Relative rated effectiveness was highly related to realism (r =.87), amount learned (r =.88), negative emotion (r =.87), and positive emotion (r = -.35). CONCLUSIONS: Evaluative research is necessary to prevent broadcast of PSAs that could have a negative impact. PSAs should point out the negative consequences of drug use behavior rather than telling adolescents to "just say no."