The use of tobacco among high school age youth continues to fall in Virginia. The rate has fallen from 28% in 2001 to 8% in 2015. The drop has been equally significant for middle school age youth. Peer pressure is one reason for the drop. Tab O'Neal reports another reason is a message young people can relate to.
Like any effective marketer, the tobacco industry used placements and messages to target a specific audience. This this from around 1950:
(Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis Chesterfield Cigarette Ad)
The same targeted marketing is happening today in tobacco use prevention campaigns:
(Down and Dirty No Dipping Ad)
The campaign is called Down and Dirty and it is one of several used by the Virginia Foundation for Healthy Youth to reach a very specific group of youth who are at risk to use tobacco.
Daniel Sagis of the VFHY says telling youth smoking is bad for your health works… to a point. About 14 percent still use tobacco:
"The knowledge alone is not enough to reach those youth that are most at risk. And so, understanding their identity, understanding what persuades them, influences them to continue to do a behavior they know is not good for them in important in creating the intervention and reach those last youth that are still using."
Sagis says among those youths, they perform risk behaviors at different rates depending on the crowd they hang out in:
"And so that's when we began to realize that we needed to segment our audience. Not just looking at all youth in Virginia as part of the same group but realizing there were different groups of youth that existed."
To most effectively reach youth with a pro health message
Looking at the lifestyles of the different groups of youth makes it apparent that one message will not fit all.
"The values of these peer crowds are going to be different. We could not create one message to reach them all. While the outcome of the intervention is meant to be the same, the message is crafted to have the greatest influence on the particular peer crowd it's meant to reach out to."
Like Down and Dirty for the country crowd, the foundation has identified other at risk youth groups.
"We do know that the hip hop peer crowd and also the alternative peer crowd are at increased risk for tobacco use. We have similar interventions that are specific for them. For the alt crowd we have one called Syke…
(Heavy Metal music and band member voice over)
And for the hip hop campaign we have one called fresh society…
(Hip hop clip with voice over)
Sagis says the messages are placed where youth are most likely to be reached: online as well as at concerts and events.
The Virginia Foundation for Healthy Youth was established by the general assembly in 1999 and is completely funded by a small portion of the money the state receives from the annual payments from the nation’s major tobacco manufacturers through the Master Settlement Agreement.
Tobacco is not the foundation's only focus, however. The Virginia Foundation for Healthy Youth also works to fight childhood obesity.