Evaluating the truth ® Brand

This 12-page article examines the American Legacy Foundation's truth ® campaign, an anti-smoking social marketing effort geared toward adolescents in the United States.

The introductory section of the piece explores the strategy behind the campaign, which informed the posturing of truth ® as a brand. Authors W. Douglas Evans, Simani Price, and Steven Blahut explain that the goal of this campaign has been to change how youth think about the tobacco industry and their imagery of not smoking, as well as establishing and reinforcing their independence from tobacco. Shown on youth-oriented television channels nationwide, the campaign has sought to establish a brand, which the authors describe as a "set of attributes that a consumer has for a product, service, or, in the case of truth ® , a set of behaviours". The authors explore the strategy of branding, noting that the relationship between a brand and a consumer can be powerful - e.g., brands can serve as symbolic devices that allow customers to project their self-image, leading them in turn to communicate to others and themselves about the type of person they are or aspire to be.

In the case of truth ® , a social marketing brand, organisers opted not to deliver traditional health messages about the risks of smoking but, instead, to use "challenging, thought-provoking ad contexts and images" to engage youth in aspiring to be "truth ® teens" who are cool, edgy, and popular risk takers, dreamers, and rebels (the very images projected by tobacco industry marketing). In the truth ® campaign, social images reflect those open to experimenting with tobacco, but opting not to engage in it. The authors add that "the use of truth ® as the brand name is in itself an effective strategy to distinguish the campaign from the deceptive marketing practices of the tobacco industry."

The study examined within this report focuses on applying the notion of "brand equity" - which is familiar when used with products - to behaviour, as is the emphasis of the truth ® brand. Brand equity can broadly be defined as a "set of attributes and associations that an individual or potential customer has regarding a product, service, or, as is the case of truth ® , not smoking." Specifically, the research reported here involved testing whether a multidimensional scale brand equity in truth ® mediates the relationship between campaign exposure and youth smoking. Researchers collected brand equity responses from 2,306 youth in the United States as part of a nationally representative telephone survey.

Results show that brand equity mediates the relationship between truth ® and smoking, and that this relationship is a robust one. In short, researchers found that the strategy of branding not smoking and associating this behaviour with socially appealing characteristics using techniques similar to those used in tobacco product advertising is an effective one for youth tobacco use prevention. They stress that, by associating the decision to not smoke with appealing images (e.g., of youth who are rebellious), developers of the truth ® campaign have given at-risk youth (i.e. those who are open to smoking) a positive role model for identification or aspiration. They also explain here why "internalizing the truth ® brand - the campaign's 'take away' message - is associated with reduced smoking uptake above and beyond simple [campaign] exposure."

The authors conclude by examining several other opportunities for research on the truth ® brand. They hypothesise that youth with high brand equity in truth ® communicate with their peers about the campaign, creating a diffusion effect that could evolve over time. Along these lines, "the campaign's aggregate reach and frequency will increase over time, which will tend to increase brand equity..." They also offer some methodological considerations, such as their finding that brand equity measurement techniques developed for use in product branding can be translated to behavioural terms - as illustrated by this very study. They argue that this multidimensional scale (outlined in detail here) is "sensitive to adolescents' complex psychological reactions to a health media campaign and has the potential for measuring other health risk behavior change media campaigns....such as [those focusing on] substance abuse or high-risk sexual behavior."

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