Cigarette smoking remains the leading preventable cause of disease, disability, and death in the United States, killing more than 480,000 Americans each year. Sixteen million people live with at least one serious smoking-related disease. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s Office on Smoking and Health (OSH) leads efforts to reduce the negative health impacts of tobacco use through the Tips From Former Smokers® (Tips®) campaign.
The Tips campaign profiles real people from many different backgrounds impacted by serious long-term health effects from smoking and secondhand smoke exposure. Tips also features compelling stories of the toll these smoking-related conditions have taken on family members.
Hard-hitting media campaigns, such as Tips, have been proven to raise awareness about the dangers of smoking and motivate people who smoke to quit. Many studies have shown that ads with strong graphic and emotional messages about health consequences are more effective than other forms of advertising, such as humorous or emotionally neutral advertisements. Given the large scientific evidence base, CDC uses graphic and emotional advertisements in its Tips campaign. The science shows that these types of hard-hitting ads help people quit smoking, save lives, and decrease the economic burden caused by cigarette smoking.
The Tips campaign aims to address health disparities in pursuit of health equity by increasing the reach, representation, receptivity, and accessibility of smoking cessation messages. Tips also increases awareness of free quit-smoking resources among adults—no matter who they are, where they live, or how much money they make.
Tips features the compelling stories of real people who have quit smoking and live with serious long-term health effects from smoking and secondhand smoke exposure. Tips also features compelling stories of the toll these smoking-related conditions have taken on family members. The campaign leverages organic and paid social media to reach and engage diverse communities disproportionately affected by tobacco use and deliver evidence-based messages that encourage smoking cessation and promote health equity. Those disproportionately affected by tobacco use include but are not limited to people who are African American, American Indian and Alaska Native (AI/AN), Asian American, Hispanic and Latino, LGBTQ+, members of the active and reserve military and veterans, people with mental health conditions, and people with lower levels of socioeconomic status. These Tips stories are shared across key social media platforms including Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, and X (formerly Twitter).
There are three key objectives for the Tips Campaign 2024 social media strategy:
The most significant challenge faced in the 2024 campaign was systemic platform restrictions on specific audience targeting. Here is what we did:
As always, the campaign is data-driven with real-time analytics on key metrics to maximize the impact of each piece of content. Comments on organic and paid ads are monitored and engaged with from CDC Tobacco Free account to answer quitting smoking questions and encourage people to quit smoking or celebrate their smokefree success. The campaign runs an iterative process that uses the approach of “Launch, Learn, Pivot” to put new efforts into the marketplace, learn fast, and evolve.
The Tips campaign achieved the following superior social media results:
Efforts were a success and laddered up to objectives of raising awareness and encouraging people to attempt to quit smoking or maintain a smokefree life. The successes of the Tips social media content achieved the goal of inspiring people to quit smoking by sharing stories of real people impacted by smoking-related diseases and driving audiences to evidence-based quit-smoking resources.
The Tips campaign is the longest-running smoking cessation campaign in the country, and systemically delivers year-over-year positive impacts on the health of the American public.
