Adapting and Recycling Anti-smoking advertisements - Two case studies: Sponge and Artery

Program evaluation
07 Jun 2010
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In 2007 and 2008, the Cancer Institute NSW adapted two previously successful television anti-smoking campaigns to be broadcast in NSW. These two advertisements were Sponge, in which black tar is squeezed from a sponge to demonstrate the amount of tar absorbed by a smoker's lungs in one year, and Artery, in which the fatty deposits lining the aorta of a smoker are depicted. The rationale for adapting these campaigns was based on their previous successes in helping to reduce the prevalence of smoking in Australia, and the aim was to re-introduce their health effects messages to a younger audience.

Sponge was originally aired in Sydney in 1983, and by 2007 the ad had not been run in NSW for over 15 years. Qualitative pre-testing indicated that there was some value in modernising the advertisement to communicate with the substantial number of smokers in the under-30 age group who had not been exposed to this particular health effects message. In 2007, the remade version of the advertisement was broadcast for seven weeks.

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