Strategic Communication
Media campaigns can reduce short- and long-term tobacco use. With our partners, Vital Strategies runs locally tailored, message-tested campaigns in broadcast, digital and offline media that raise awareness of tobacco harms and build support for effective tobacco control policies.
Strategic Communication Designed for Impact
Our campaigns encourage quitting, delay initiation among young people and build public support for tobacco control policies. Over the long term, they help change the acceptability of smoking and attitudes about the tobacco industry.
Youth and adults are continually exposed to enticing portrayals of tobacco use in the media, so it is critical to counter that bombardment with content that reveals tobacco’s harms.
Vital Strategies has executed over 450 tobacco-focused media campaigns in 44 countries. Our campaigns raise awareness of tobacco’s health harms, strengthen public support for key policy goals—such as smoke-free laws, tobacco taxes and advertising bans—and encourage the public to recognize insidious marketing tactics and call for the tobacco industry to be held accountable. To date, more than 2 billion people have seen our campaigns.
Our award-winning approach to strategic communication is rooted in behavioral science, responsive to local contexts and designed to foster lasting policy change. We employ our ASPIRE (Analyze, Strategize, Prepare, Implement, Review, Evaluate) model in all our communication activities—a tested, six-step approach to developing, implementing and evaluating strategic communication campaigns.
We partner with governments, civil society and funders to deliver results, guiding partners through three critical areas of strategic communication:
Campaigns Grounded in Research
Evidence generated by our Behavioral Insights Lab shapes how we design and deliver our campaigns. Data from our Canary service, Tobacco Atlas project and STOP program informs our messaging.
Vital’s Behavioral Insights Lab applies social and behavioral science to strengthen policy advocacy, campaign strategy and public engagement. The lab generates decision-ready insights through message testing, audience research, digital intelligence and rapid analysis of industry narratives. This helps partners understand what different audiences believe, what barriers limit support for tobacco control policies, and which messages can build trust, urgency and demand for action.
Our digital media monitoring service, Canary, collects examples of tobacco marketing on social media and news platforms. This data informs our campaigns, particularly related to exposing industry tactics and pushing for advertising bans.
The Tobacco Atlas, published in partnership with the Economics for Health at Johns Hopkins University, is the leading global resource for policymakers, journalists and advocates to understand the global tobacco epidemic. Its up-to-date data informs our campaigns for advancing tobacco control policy.
STOP is a global tobacco industry watchdog that works to expose and counter industry behavior that undermines public health. Its monitoring, research and reporting informs our anti-industry campaigns.
Media Engagement that Bolsters Campaign Outcomes
We complement our paid media campaigns with unpaid media and PR strategies to bolster our reach. We conduct media outreach and capacity strengthening for journalists on the topic of tobacco control so that policies are fully understood and accurately reported. Our press strategies help spread campaign messaging not only via broadcast channels and digital media, but also through the news the public reads every day.
Voices Without Cigarettes Campaign in Indonesia
An anti-tobacco campaign stripped the taboo from cancer conversations to reach smokers and their loved ones.
Insights and Updates
