People like me – opportunities and obstacles from a marketing campaign highlighting real life quitters

Authors and presenters:
Andy Lloyd
Media, Communications and Social Marketing Manager, FRESH – Smoke Free North East, Chester-le-Street, UK

Martyn Willmore
Performance Delivery Improvement Manager, FRESH – Smoke Free North East, Chester-le-Street, UK

Abstract
To mark the 10-year anniversary of NHS Stop Smoking Services, FRESH developed and implemented a high profile integrated marketing and PR campaign to highlight the achievements of real life quitters and advisers from Stop Smoking Services.

The aims were to build a localised aura of success for quitting in neighbourhoods across the North East from a regional tobacco office, breaking down some of the confusion about ‘what happens when you visit a stop smoking service.’

Working with a marketing agency, work got underway to gather information about local case studies to be the ‘stars’ of the campaign. As the first campaign nationally to focus on real quitters, it required former smokers to tell their personal, often moving stories, and expose themselves and their families to the glare of publicity.

This presentation will explore some of the highlights and barriers of the campaign, as well as some of the issues it highlighted along the way. It will look at the reaction from the media and from partner organisations such as PCTs and local authorities to get involved. Finally, it will share evaluation and lessons learned, from generating awareness to encouraging people to quit through the NHS.

Source of funding: FRESH

Declaration of interest: none

About the presenters
After graduating from Royal Holloway, University of London in 1995, Martyn spent the next 12 years working for the NHS Business Services Authority as a Business Analyst and Senior Service Improvement Manager. From there he moved to West Midlands Strategic Health Authority as their Performance Manager, before joining the FRESH Smoke Free North East team as Performance Improvement Delivery Manager in August 2008.

Andy Lloyd is Media, Communications and Social Marketing Manager with FRESH Smoke Free North East, responsible for campaigns, public relations and internal communications on a variety of tobacco issues. He is a Communication Studies graduate of Nottingham Trent University (BA Hons) and holds a Postgraduate Diploma in journalism and a Professional Diploma from the Chartered Institute of Marketing (CIM)

Before working in health marketing, he spent five years at Northumberland County Council and the Northumberland Joint Transition Team during Local Government Re-organisation. A former journalist, he has been a crime reporter and news editor on local and regional newspapers.