Introduction
Smoking continues to be a problem among many individuals worldwide. An attempt to decrease availability to those under 18 years of age resulted in a law that requires proof of age to purchase cigarettes. However, enforcement is far from being met. In many public places, smoking is allowed and even minor aged individuals can smoke. This paper will present and discuss an outline for a low budget oppositional/ protest or advocacy promotional campaign against smoking on a Chinese restaurant in Hong Kong. Its aims, concept, design, target audience, ethics/values, media, mode of address, placement, or cultural context of the said anti-smoking campaign will also be discussed.
Background
Success in response to public health education is more likely in professional and managerial persons and in those best able to intelligently appreciate the risks associated with smoking. Unfortunately, most smokers do not usually stop smoking until the onset of ill health. Withdrawal effects, possibly related to nicotine deprivation, include depression, anxiety, irritability, insomnia, and weight gain.
Hypnosis, aversion therapy, group therapy, and special smoking withdrawal clinics have helped individuals break their smoking habit, but the overall value of these aids is uncertain. Persons unable to stop cigarette smoking should be encouraged to change to a less dangerous method of smoking such as using pipes or cigars, or filter-tipped cigarettes with a low tar and nicotine content. The risk may be also reduced by smoking fewer cigarettes, inhaling less, leaving a longer stub, and taking fewer puffs/cigarettes (Pampel, 2005).
Various organizations have put up campaigns against smoking. Yet not all of them do work. Governments alone cannot set up a successful campaign against smoking. Thus we see many private organizations that also help in campaigns against smoking.
Outline of the Anti-Smoking Campaign
The aim of this project is to promote campaign against smoking on a Chinese restaurant in Hong Kong. Aside from the fact that cigarette smoking can damage the health of the one smoking, it can also pose serious health risks to other people in the vicinity. As this is a restaurant open to all people, a smoker who smokes inside the restaurant could present second hand smoke to the other patrons of the restaurant. As could be exemplified in Chang’s (1997) paper on urban imaging strategies, an image as a restaurant that allows smoking could be a drawback for the restaurant. Like tourists going to a country, customers would rather opt to go to a restaurant where all the customers do not smoke while inside.
A campaign against smoking could not only help the smoker but also help other people and the restaurant as well. If smokers continue to frequent the restaurant and the restaurant does nothing about it, chances are that some of the patrons would rather visit another restaurant where they would not be exposed to second hand smoking.
These smokers should also be educated on how much of an impact their smoking can have to those people around them. Some of these smokers may know that smoking is bad for them, but not many are aware that they also pose risks to people around them. People who smoke should therefore be concerned to people who don’t. These and many other promotional slogans will be included in pamphlets that will be distributed by the group.
The target audience for this anti-smoking campaign will be people who come to dine in the Chinese restaurant. Regardless of whether the customer smokes or not, he or she will be afforded the same attention as everyone by the project team. Everyone will be given promotional campaign leaflets against smoking. Perhaps to be exempted from the target audience will be children below ten years of age and do not yet understand clearly what the promotional campaign is all about. These promotions will avoid audience/consumer cynicism, skepticism and irony, but still have to contend with clutter, apathy, rejection.
The main media channels for this project will be accorded to the low budget that the group has. Aside from hanging “No Smoking” signs inside the Chinese restaurant, members of the project team will be handing out postcards and other handouts such as car stickers and pamphlets promoting anti-smoking to patrons of the restaurant outside. Outside the restaurant, there will also be anti-smoking campaign posters. People need media to provide them with predigested views because they cannot experience all of life first-hand (Black, 2001).
The project team will have an “official” pamphlet and poster which would explain the anti-smoking campaign undertaken by the group. It would provide the primary aims of such a campaign and also provide important facts about cigarette smoking.
The project team could borrow from The Tobacco Institute’s anti-smoking campaign slogans decades ago. The project team could write in their pamphlets words like: “Smoking has its time and place. But not in someone else’s face (The Tobacco Institute, 1975).”
These project team members will of course not disturb the customers while they are eating or are engaged in some other important. They will be distributing their campaign materials to the customers after they have dined and are going home.
There will, however no personal surveys of the customers regarding their smoking habits and preferences or the nonexistent of such. The members of the project team will not discriminate anyone and therefore think that it will be best to avoid personal questions regarding the smoking habits and preferences of a restaurant customer. There is a tendency for those who smoke to feel discriminated if the members of the project team will start asking questions. It is understandable of course that people would want more privacy. This is not a research activity and there are no informed consent for the participants as is characterized in researches.
As is the same for the United Benetton Campaigns (Back & Quaade, 1993), the posters for this promotional campaign against smoking will feature graphics that will be within the accepted limits for the culture that it is intended so as not to attract negative publicity. There will be no racist overtones in the posters and pamphlets and will have the intention of transcending human divisions. The promotional campaign materials will therefore be designed to attract people’s attention regardless of race, color, age, and sex, among many other factors.
The campaign materials for the anti-smoking promotion campaign will try not to dwell on too much propaganda, if possible there will be no hint of propaganda at all. As is discussed by Black (2001), the tendency of media to mitigate against open-mindedness is one of the dominant themes in media criticism. The group will have to do all that they can so that their promotional campaign materials or media will avoid media criticisms.
There is no clear discussion as to how the results of the anti-smoking promotional campaign will be measured. The only aim of the project is to disseminate as much promotional campaign against smoking as possible within a very limited area.
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