Back to Annual Meeting Page		American Public Health Association 133rd Annual Meeting & Exposition December 10-14, 2005 Philadelphia, PA

Abstract #109667

W. Douglas Evans, PhD¹, Sarah E. Ray, MA², James C. Hersey, PhD², Jeanette Renaud, PhD², Icilda Stevens-Dickerson, MSA³, and Beth Schieber, BS⁴. (1) RTI International, 1615 M St. NW (Suite 740), Washington, DC 20036, 202-728-2080, devans@rti.org, (2) Research Triangle Institute, 1615 M St. (Suite 740), Washington, DC 20036, (3) Ohio Tobbaco Use Prevention and Control Foundation, 300 E Broad St., Suite 310, Columbus, OH 43215, (4) Ohio Tobacco Use Prevention and Control Foundation, 300 E Broad St., Suite 310, Columbus, OH 43215

Ohio tobacco countermarketing stand brand calls on young people to take a stand against tobacco use based on aspirational messages and images of Ohio youth. Similar strategies have been used by national social marketing campaigns such as Legacy's truth® (Evans et al. 2002), CDC's Verb It's What You Do (Huhman et al. 2004), and ONDCP's National Youth Anti-drug Media Campaign (NIDA 2004). Having brand equity in truth® mediated the relationship between tobacco countermarking exposure and lower smoking uptake (Evans et al. 2005). Campaign evaluators have developed a stand brand equity scale. It is based on the campaign's behavior change objectives, a similar scale developed for truth®, and scales used in commercial branding research. They include sub-scales on brand reaction, loyalty, popularity, and personality. The scale captures youth awareness of stand and the extent to which they associate it with positive messages and images. This presentation reports the first-ever longitudinal evidence of health behavior change associated with a public health brand. Findings presented at the 2004 APHA meeting suggested a causal association between stand popularity and smoking initiation: Never smokers at time 1 who considered stand popular were more than 10 times less likely to initiate smoking by time 2. We extend these analyses to include time 3 data from the Ohio Youth Tobacco Evaluation Survey, a statewide representative survey of youth aged 12-18, and analyses of stand sub-scales. Findings can inform campaign planning and social marketers seeking to reduce youth health risk behavior across multiple domains.

Learning Objectives: Attendees will be able to

• Apply branding as a social marketing strategy,
• describe how states have utilized it, and
• describe the effectiveness of tobacco countermarketing brands in changing smoking behavior.

Keywords: Social Marketing, Evaluation

Presenting author's disclosure statement:

I wish to disclose that I have NO financial interests or other relationship with the manufactures of commercial products, suppliers of commercial services or commercial supporters.