TOBACCO

ADICTION
MARKETING PROJECT REPORT

ALVARO GARCIA GARCIA

MARKETING MANAGEMENT / BACHELOR 3 GROUP 1

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MARKETING MANAGEMENT | BACHELOR’S 3. GROUP 1
INDEX:

1. INTRODUCTION
1.1. TARGET POPULATION
1.2. SURVEY RESULTS

2. ADVERTISING PLAN
2.1 WHY THIS MESSAGE

2.2 ADVERTISEMENT DEVELOPMENT

3. RESEARCH RESULTS:
3.1. BRIEF SUMMARY OF CAMPAIGNS RESULTS.
3.2. CONCLUSION

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 1. INTRODUCTION:
Tobacco has been during the 20th century one of the major causes of mortality in
industrialized countries, and nowadays is the second preventable death cause in the
world, bringing about around death of 5 million people per year. The aggressive
advertising campaigns of the tobacco companies managed to associate cigarettes with
socially recognized values such as independence, maturity or freedom, which greatly
popularized their consumption, first among men and later also among women.

Lifelong tobacco addiction usually begins before the age of 18. Long-term tobacco use
causes various types of cancer and chronic diseases such as lung cancer, gastric cancer,
stroke, and coronary heart disease. Half of all long-term smokers will die from tobacco-
related diseases.

These are the consequences of quitting smoking at an early age:

• Around 30 years of age: Almost 10 years of life expectancy are gained.
• Around 40 years of age: 9 years of life expectancy are gained.
• Around 50 years of age: 6 years of life expectancy are gained.
• Around 60 years of age: 3 years of life expectancy are gained.

However, society has been becoming aware of the enormous health effects caused by
tobacco, and various social and institutional sectors have launched a battle against its
consumption. In recent years, this fight against smoking has been intensified through
more restrictive legislation in spaces where smoking is allowed, and aggressive
advertising campaigns that show the negative consequences of tobacco. These efforts
are giving results since the number of smokers has been reduced and, what is more
important, the idea that tobacco is very harmful to health has been installed in the
collective consciousness of society, something recognized even by the smokers
themselves.

The progressive public awareness about the perverse effects of tobacco and therefore
the continuous reduction in the number of smokers, however, is not being accompanied
by a lower rate of consumption among the adolescent population, as numerous studies
point out. This failure in policies aimed at preventing the initiation of tobacco
consumption among adolescents is of crucial importance in the general prevention of
smoking since it is precisely at this age when the vast majority of smokers start their
habit.

I would also like to point out that nowadays being a smoker does not only mean
smoking tobacco, today numerous alternatives to tobacco have emerged that in theory
are less harmful to health, such as IQOS, Jull, vapes... This is a problem huge since
young people have different options to start smoking, when before there was only
tobacco.

For this reason, I have decided to carry out this study, in order to understand the social
processes that intervene in the experimentation and habituation of the consumption of
tobacco or other substances among the adolescent population. Knowing and
understanding why young people start smoking is necessary to be able to intervene
effectively by designing campaigns adapted to the target population.

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 1.1 TARGET POPULATION

The general objective of the study was to analyze and compare the consumption of
tobacco and its pattern of consumption among university students from Spain and
France and also, check the existence of a change in the behavior of young consumers
after having carried out the marketing campaign

I have decided to focus on the young population for several reasons. Firstly, because I
belong to the young population and I consider that I am more prepared to address
people like me than adults, on the other hand, I think that the speech about quitting
smoking has always reached young people from the adult population and I think it's
time to change that. We are the young people who, with everyone's help, have to try to
change the behaviors that are harmful to us, not only for our health, but also for the
health of future generations. On the other hand, without neglecting the adult population,
it is the young who have to give a generational change and little by little put aside this
socially accepted behavior today. And lastly, because I am interested in knowing why
tobacco or similar substances have become fashionable again among young people, the
increase in consumption among women has caught my attention.

Another reason that I consider important when focusing on the young population is that
tobacco use among young people is a major public health problem throughout the
world.
Today more than 17% of young people between the ages of 13 and 15 use some form of
tobacco and 9.5% of students currently smoke cigarettes and 1 in 10 students consume
products from the tobacco other than cigarettes
(eg, pipes, smokeless tobacco, iqos). Another important fact to consider is that the
European region has the highest rate of cigarette consumption among students (19.2%).

This research is not only aimed at smokers, but also has an influence on non-smokers
since even for young people who do not smoke, exposure to secondhand smoke is high.

I would like to present my personal experience as an ex-smoker that I am. I started

smoking since I was 17 years old, basically I think it was due to social pressure. I
started smoking some cigarettes at parties with no intention of starting to smoke
regularly, I thought I could quit at any time. When I started smoking, I knew that it was
harmful to my health, but I was not aware of the problems it generated. I began to notice
the effects by lowering my sports performance, however I continued smoking until I
became a regular smoker. In my country smoking tobacco is not something that is
socially frowned upon, but I could say that on the contrary, smoking can even become
an excuse to socialize with people.

after 3 years smoking tobacco I started smoking IQOS (i quit ordinary smoking) a type
of tobacco that instead of burning the tobacco heats it up, it is supposed to be healthier
and I thought it would be a first step on my way to quit smoking.

Finally, last year I stopped smoking any type of tobacco and when I saw the good
effects that I have noticed both on the economic side, which is very important for a
young person, and on the health side, I realized how really harmful that smoking can be.

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I know that many adolescents started smoking like me and I believe that campaigns like
this can help young people realize what a bad decision it is.

I decided to carry out a questionnaire through the google forms platform with a series of
questions to find out the habits of young people in relation to their smoking habits and
in If they smoke, the possible reasons that have led them to smoke.
This were the results that I obteined

1.2 SURVEY RESULTS

In order to measure smoking addiction on young people I chose a sample of

41university students from Spain and France. The sample was made up of students
between the ages of 18 and 26. 24.4 % of the sample was between 18 and 20 years old,
65,8 of them between 21 and 23 years old and 9,6 % were24 or older , 46,3 of them
were females while the 53,7 remaining were males. These answers remain the same for
both surveys (before and after)

The main question of my questionnaire consisted of knowing the percentage of

smokers, in this question I obtained that 65,9 are smokers while the 34,1 are not. I have
also decided to ask a question to find out if they have ever tried tobacco even if they are
not regular smokers

The result of this question has caught my attention because, although the percentage of
regular smokers is high, the percentage of people who have tried it at some time in their
lives is much higher. Which shows us that nowadays getting hooked on tobacco is
something very easy and that most of the people who try it end up becoming regular
smokers.

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After these two main questions, I have decided to start asking a series of questions to
find out more about the behavior of young people when it comes to smoking.

As we can see in the results, young people smoke more when they are with their friends
and in party settings. I have previously mentioned that smoking has become an excuse
to socialize and even to feel socially accepted, and these responses confirm this. To
check the effect that social pressure can have when starting to smoke, I decided to ask a
question about whether the people around them smoke.

In the question on the left we observe that 521.2% of people have family members who
smoke, it has been shown that those who have people in their family who smoke are
much more likely to start smoking in the future, this is mainly due to who have it much
more normalized and who tend to have easier access to tobacco.
On the other hand, in the question on the right, I decided to know if they have friends
who smoke, since social pressure also has a great influence. 11.8% of those surveyed
have stated that all their friends smoke. The question was worded so that one meant
100% disagree and five meant 100% agree. With these results we can affirm that the
more people you have in your environment who smoke, the more likely you are to end
up smoking.

Another factor that I found interesting is how tobacco smoking affects the economy of
smokers.

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We can clearly see that tobacco, apart from being bad for health, carries a very high
economic cost and is a very important factor for many people when it comes to quitting.

One of the reasons why many people smoke is because they say that it helps reduce
stress, which is why many people do not quit. we can see from the results that many
smokers agree that it helps them reduce stress and that it is a very important reason they
smoke.

The last two questions in my questionnaire were focused on knowing if people think
they know the effects of tobacco and knowing if they plan to quit smoking at some
point.

The 48,8 % acknowledged not knowing the negative effects, nowadays we all know that
tobacco is bad but he doesn't know, I really don't know the effects it can produce on us,
to change, making people aware of the effects has been one of my objectives of this
campaign.

Esta ultima pregunta es la mas importante a la hora de saber si la campaña ha tenido

efecto

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In this question, the smallest percentage is that of people who do not want to quit
smoking, however the percentage of people who want to quit immediately is also very
low (9.5%). this tells us that people currently have no intention of quitting tobacco

2. ADVERTISING PLAN

The main objective of my marketing campaign has been promote cessation, reduce the
possibility of initiation and have a great influence on all young smokers. I have also had
the objective of increasing their information on the consequences of tobacco and try to
"denormalize" the habit of smoking

I believe that in my case, anti-tobacco advertising must be aggressive advertising that

shows powerful messages to make the population reflect, All these types of campaigns
try to raise awareness about the negative consequences of tobacco consumption in the
general population, both in those smokers and in the so-called passive smokers.

2.1 WHY THIS MESSAGE

As an ex-smoker that I am, I know from my own experience the consequences of

smoking, and I believe that this campaign is a way to help many young people who, like
me, started smoking at a very young age.

There are more than 200 reasons to quit smoking, and I want to try to make people see
that if they want to, they can quit.

One of the reasons why I quit smoking was because I considered that the sooner the
better, after doing some research I have seen a piece of information that has confirmed
it.

2.2 Advertisement Development

I have made an announcement that I have distributed through two different channels.
My objective was to focus on the young population, so I decided to print my ad and
create posters to stick around the university, however, I thought that it would not be
enough since I personally do not pay attention to the posters that are in the university.
That's why I decided to go to Instagram because I think it's the best way to advertise
today and it's also free. Post a story with the same poster I stick at the university.

My poster was made up of different elements that tried to send the message that I
wanted to get:

• The main slogan of my campaign is "ITS TIME TO QUIT", that is the main
objective of the campaign, that people stop smoking, that is why I have chosen
it.
• NOW OR NEVER: This is the secondary slogan of my campaign, the objective
that this message intends to show is that the sooner you quit smoking, the better,
since there can be a big difference in our lives between quitting now or in 20

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 years. That is why we say now or never, because years of smoking can have
lifelong consequences.
• I have decided to put a forceful phrase that would call attention so that people
would realize the real problem that smoking is. It's a silent pandemic that lives
with us. The sentence is “ 4 out of 10 people who have seen this poster have
smoked at some time in their life…”
• Finally, as a visual element I have decided to put the smoke, I have decided to
put it not only because it is what smoking is associated with, but also because it
is the smoke that causes passive smokers to also be affected by the behaviors of
others.

After posting my poster on Instagram and distribute it around the university I also
decided to create a true or false test so that both smokers and non-smokers would know
the effects of smoking. I believe that knowing and being aware of the negative effects of
smoking is the most important step in quitting. I also think that just with my
announcement I was not going to change anything and I had to go further

The test had the intention of giving strong data to the respondents, it was presented to
them as a true or false test, all the questions were true except the last one. With this, he
wanted people to realize the serious consequences of smoking and change their
behavior.

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3. RESEARCH RESULTS:
3.1 BRIEF SUMMARY OF CAMPAIGNS RESULTS.

After they took the test, I resubmitted the questionnaire to see if there were any changes
in their answers.When analyzing the results I decided to focus on those questions that
could have changed

Survey 1 Survey 2

In the main objective we have not achieved any results since we have the same number
of smokers as at the beginning of the campaign, however once these results have been
seen I have decided to go and see if we have achieved other objectives that I had.
Survey 1 Survey 2

In this case, we can see that the test we carried out has had a certain influence on the
young people surveyed and that now they are somewhat more aware of the effects of
tobacco. In my case, the information that I provide is very scarce and there are a
thousand more facts about the negative consequences of tobacco that little by little as a
society we must know. The importance lies in becoming aware and accepting that
tobacco affects our health and making the personal decision to quit smoking, as there
are many campaigns saying that it is bad, that it harms the family, the little ones so that
they stop doing it, because unfortunately smokers don't see that background

The last question in which there could be changes was whether people were planning to
quit smoking

Survey 1 Survey 2

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In this question we can see that there is a great change in the behavior of young people,
after carrying out the campaign many young people have changed their behavior and
plan to quit smoking very soon or even immediately. I consider that the test I had to see
already presents strong data that makes people make the right decision

As a summary we can affirm that there has been a change in the answers. On the one
hand, we have not achieved the main objective of getting people to stop smoking, but
we have achieved other secondary objectives such as increasing people's knowledge
about the consequences of tobacco and that many young people consider quitting in a
short time.

3.2 CONCLUSION

As a conclusion, I would like to highlight a few points. The first is that I am glad to see
certain positive results even if they are small, I knew that smoking is a difficult subject
since it is very difficult to make people change their opinion about tobacco.

As a thing to improve I think that when making the poster I should have used a much
more impressive image and above all focus on the damage that tobacco does to others
since it is what most affects smokers

I have also realized how important are the anti-tobacco campaigns I also think that
Tobacco is a public health problem that affects our adolescents above all, who are the
future of the country, so it is necessary to take tougher and more drastic measures to
prevent the increase in the number of smokers and the age at which they start smoking.
use and/or abuse. We have to make more emphasis must be placed on the prohibition of
its advertising and its promotion through big brands and events aimed above all at the
youngest. In addition, attempts should be made to promote the abandonment of this
habit for individual and collective health, with governments being the ones who have to
put the most effort.

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REFERENCES

https://www.cancer.org/healthy/stay-away-from-tobacco/why-people-start-using-
tobacco.html

https://www.cdc.gov/tobacco/data_statistics/fact_sheets/youth_data/tobacco_use/index.
htm

https://www.lung.org/quit-smoking/smoking-facts/tobacco-use-among-children

https://nida.nih.gov/publications/research-reports/tobacco-nicotine-e-cigarettes/how-
many-adolescents-use-tobacco

https://www.who.int/es/health-topics/tobacco#tab=tab_1

https://www.who.int/fr/news-room/fact-sheets/detail/tobacco

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