The impact of televised tobacco control advertising content on campaign recall: evidence from the International Tobacco Control (ITC) United Kingdom Survey.

Sol Richardson,Robert Heath,Anna Gilmore,Sarah Lewis,Michelle Sims,Tessa E Langley,Ann Mcneill,Lisa Szatkowski,Geoffrey T Fong

doi:10.1186/1471-2458-14-432

Abstract

BackgroundAlthough there is some evidence to support an association between exposure to televised tobacco control campaigns and recall among youth, little research has been conducted among adults. In addition, no previous work has directly compared the impact of different types of emotive campaign content. The present study examined the impact of increased exposure to tobacco control advertising with different types of emotive content on rates and durations of self-reported recall.MethodsData on recall of televised campaigns from 1,968 adult smokers residing in England through four waves of the International Tobacco Control (ITC) United Kingdom Survey from 2005 to 2009 were merged with estimates of per capita exposure to government-run televised tobacco control advertising (measured in GRPs, or Gross Rating Points), which were categorised as either “positive” or “negative” according to their emotional content.ResultsIncreased overall campaign exposure was found to significantly increase probability of recall. For every additional 1,000 GRPs of per capita exposure to negative emotive campaigns in the six months prior to survey, there was a 41% increase in likelihood of recall (OR = 1.41, 95% CI: 1.24–1.61), while positive campaigns had no significant effect. Increased exposure to negative campaigns in both the 1–3 months and 4–6 month periods before survey was positively associated with recall.ConclusionsIncreased per capita exposure to negative emotive campaigns had a greater effect on campaign recall than positive campaigns, and was positively associated with increased recall even when the exposure had occurred more than three months previously.

Highlights

There is some evidence to support an association between exposure to televised tobacco control campaigns and recall among youth, little research has been conducted among adults
Classic marketing theory assumes that high levels of recall improve advertising effectiveness and that campaign recall provides a proxy measure of effective campaign exposure [18,19]
The effect of overall Six-month campaign exposure on probability of recall Increased exposure to televised tobacco control campaigns was associated with higher odds of six-month campaign recall

Summary

Introduction

There is some evidence to support an association between exposure to televised tobacco control campaigns and recall among youth, little research has been conducted among adults. Classic marketing theory assumes that high levels of recall improve advertising effectiveness and that campaign recall provides a proxy measure of effective campaign exposure [18,19] Recent research calls this assumption into question, suggesting that recall can be a misleading measure of effectiveness when applied to positive emotive campaigns [20]. In contrast with other media markets such as Australia, the UK provides an ideal context to evaluate the effects of different campaign types due to the wide variety of messaging and emotive content. This allowed us to explicitly compare population-level effects of exposure to both positive and negative emotive campaigns

Methods

Results

Conclusion