Strategies for an effective youth counter-marketing program: recommendations from commercial marketing experts.
Intensive and sustained efforts to "counter-market" tobacco among teenagers are necessary to negate the "friendly familiarity" created by tobacco advertising and to communicate the true health and social costs of tobacco use. Counter-marketing campaigns should: highlight a tobacco-free lifestyle as the majority lifestyle of diverse and interesting individuals; explain the dangers of tobacco in a personal, emotional way; offer youth empowerment and control; use multiple voices, strategies, and executions; offer constructive alternatives to tobacco use; and portray smoking as unacceptable and undesirable for everyone. Counter-marketing activities should work in concert with other interventions to alter social norms regarding tobacco.
McKenna
J
J
Health Communications Branch, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Atlanta, Georgia 30341-3724, USA. jwm0@cdc.gov
Gutierrez
K
K
McCall
K
K
D000293:Adolescent; D000294:Adolescent Behavior; D000329:Advertising; D001294:Attitude to Health; D002648:Child; D006266:Health Education / Q000379:methods*; D007722:Health Knowledge, Attitudes, Practice; D006801:Humans; D008019:Life Style; D008389:Marketing of Health Services / Q000379:methods*; D010934:Planning Techniques; D011209:Power, Psychological; D000297:Psychology, Adolescent; D000074606:Smoking Prevention; D019460:Tobacco Industry