The report they don't want you to see
Thursday, August 6, 2009 Tuesday's report by the Taxpayers' Alliance (HERE) invites a number of questions about the use of public money for political lobbying. Another document that begs similar questions is a report entitled "Department of Health: Tobacco control, the power of partnerships".
According to the National Audit Office ("helping the nation spend wisely"), "This paper shows how the Government, via a coalition of related intermediary brands (NHS, Cancer Research UK and British Heart Foundation), successfully changed smoking behaviour with each organisation offering a different reason to give up, in ways that did not victimise smokers".
Curiously, although the existence of the report still features on the NAO website, the actual document has disappeared. (Click on the link HERE.)
Odd, that.
Fortunately, a copy of the 4-page "case study" has this fallen fortuitously into my lap(top). And it makes interesting reading. Judge for yourself:
Why read this case study?
This case study demonstrates how engaging and working with intermediaries can complement a government department’s communication effort, adding weight and variety to a campaign. It also demonstrates how using the provenance of outside organisations can add credibility to key messages.
Summary – about this case study
This paper shows how the Government, via a coalition of related intermediary brands (NHS, Cancer Research UK and British Heart Foundation), successfully changed smoking behaviour with each organisation offering a different reason to give up, in ways that did not victimise smokers.
Background
In 1998, the Department of Health unleashed a new assault on tobacco in the White Paper ‘Smoking Kills’. The key objective of the paper was to help existing smokers to quit. A target was set to reduce adult smoking from 28% to 21% by 2010, with a fall to 26% by 2005. While 69% of smokers claimed ‘I want to give up smoking’ and 83% wished they had never started, 44% of smokers agreed ‘I don’t think I could give up smoking because I am addicted’. To reach the 2005 targets would mean encouraging almost a million smokers to give up. It takes the average smoker five or six attempts before they give up for good.
DH was particularly keen not to communicate with potential quitters in an oppressive way: they wanted to bring smokers ‘with us rather than turn them against us’.
DH had already started to move away from being just an information provider to becoming a true ‘service provider’. This approach included providing a comprehensive range of NHS ‘products’ and ‘services’ to increase quitters’ success rates such as NHS Local Stop Smoking services, the NHS smoking helpline and the Give Up Smoking website. The new approach was part of a wider push to position the NHS brand as the brand for health.
The decision to use intermediaries
To learn from international experience, DH reviewed some very successful smoking cessation campaigns from around the world. From Australia particularly the power of certain types of shock tactics was notable. In California, there had been great success disabusing smokers of some of the beliefs about smoking, which had been fostered by the industry.
DH then commissioned research which showed that the shock and anti-industry approaches performed very well with consumers, but there were two problems. First, the graphic visual style of the Australian campaign was felt to be too hard-hitting for the NHS brand and second, government messages exposing the industry were counterproductive and viewed as hypocritical in England. There was a strong desire to avoid smokers feeling ‘victimised’ by too many ‘government warnings’.
The breakthrough to resolve these problems was to engage powerful intermediaries who would be willing to become a credible voice for these two approaches. Traditionally, DH had been supportive of NGOs that shared the same health agenda, but there had been relatively little true partnership working.
In November 2002, DH took the radical step of committing £15m over three years to fund tobacco control campaigns from charities, including Cancer Research UK (CRUK) and The British Heart Foundation (BHF).
CRUK agreed to reveal the truth behind the tobacco industry’s ‘light’ and ‘mild’ tobacco descriptors. Their ‘Death Repackaged’ campaign, successfully used dangerous animals with cosy names to illustrate the idea that just because ‘low tar’ cigarettes have nice names such as ‘lights’ or ‘mild’ doesn’t mean they are any less dangerous.
There is proof that the CRUK branding specifically increased the impact of communication: 67% of smokers agreed that the advertising ‘really caught’ their attention; but if smokers were aware it was from Cancer Research UK, 84% found it attention grabbing. This clearly demonstrates the strength of using charities as an independent credible voice.
Additionally, CRUK’s ‘Death Repackaged’ created a PR explosion. MediaCom estimated that the PR was worth £1.5m, demonstrating again the value of using an intermediary’s voice.
BHF brought its authority to the link between smoking and the heart in a new and graphic way with their award-winning ‘give up before you clog up’ campaign. Through a separate segmentation exercise, they identified a group defined as C2DE ‘multiquitters’ to be the prime target for the campaign. These were smokers who had tried but failed to give up smoking three or four times, a particularly promising group to target given the earlier research that had identified that it takes the average smoker five or six attempts before they give up for good.
Like the CRUK element of the overall campaign, the BHF activity was also proven to have a dramatic effect in changing smoking behaviour among consumers. Tracking research showed that extreme concern about clogged arteries increased among smokers significantly from 29% to 45% post-campaign. A helpline set up uniquely for the campaign received 13,000 calls, with 46% of those using it claiming to have quit smoking at the time of calling.
Follow-up evaluation found that 34% of helpline callers had still quit a month after the end of the campaign. In healthcare delivery, some NHS primary care trusts reported up to a 25% increase in referrals to smoking cessation clinics as a direct result of the campaign.
But beyond the external success of the campaign, it is worth emphasising what BHF itself gained from the partnership approach with DH. Traffic to the main BHF website doubled year on year making bhf.org.uk the second most visited healthcare website in the UK after breastcancer.org.uk. BHF’s own tracking study showed on several measures a halo effect that enhanced perceptions of the BHF brand.
Proving the compound effects of using intermediaries
One of the main benefits of using intermediaries was the degree to which it extended the campaign. The earlier review of international campaigns had identified constant media presence as an important factor in changing consumer behaviour. By involving several partners, DH was able to maintain active campaigning in the marketplace for 44 out of the 53 months following its launch in December 1999.
The proof of whether working with intermediaries is beneficial depends on the degree to which the whole is more than the sum of the parts. The campaign’s evaluation was able to prove that for the Tobacco Control campaign this was in fact the case. Integrating advertisers enabled more smokers to be targeted with more messages, surrounding the smoker with an increased number of reasons to give up. Using other ‘voices’ helped to deliver more messages without being seen to be victimising smokers. There was also added credibility to the messaging as a result of using non-government organisations.
Using multiple voices was proved to be not just complementary, but additive. The approach built momentum and word of mouth, fuelling intention to give up smoking. It was proved that the multiplier effect works harder than single campaign strands by looking at how smokers’ attitudes were affected by advertising according to the number of strands they had seen. Among consumers who only recognised the TV ad, 41% said that the advertising had made them more likely to quit. This increased to 50% among consumers who recognised the TV, press and poster ads. And 57% took action as a result of seeing the TV ad compared to 70% among those who had seen all three media.
Transferable learnings
There are three key learnings from this case study which can be applied to other projects.
In new campaigns requiring fresh thinking, it is always helpful to look at international experience, to benefit from lessons learned elsewhere.
When targeting very wide audiences such as smokers, it helps to target the most promising segments/lowest hanging fruit – in this case the multiquitters, who were identified as being closest to the ‘tipping point’ of giving up for good.
Successful partnerships find the ‘win:wins’ – in this case BHF was able to measure a range of hard and soft benefits from linking up with DH, while DH’s broader objectives around smoking cessation were served by visible association with a credible charity brand.
So, to sum up:
- Government funds third party organisations to say things it can't say itself (in case it gets accused of "victimising" smokers).
- Charitable organisations are increasingly being used as an arm of government.
- Without any public debate, the Department of Health has been transformed by stealth from an "information provider" to a "service (ie quit smoking) provider". Good news for the pharmaceutical industry; bad news for those who want to make informed choices without being
denormalisedbullied by the state.
I wonder what else they are hiding from us?
Reader Comments (21)
Talk about lying in plain sight! when they claim that the govt successfully changed smoking behaviour that did not victimise smokers?
Do they still believe our brains are still programmed to believe that shite.
Sounds to me like the last sting of a dying wasp.
Hello guys, there's a recession on in case you didnt notice in your ivory towers and the quangos funding will have to be downsized, hence the lack of sickening and disgusting anti smoking ads on the tele these days.
Please dont bullshit us into thinking its because of your caring softly softly approach.
In the present climate people are more worried now about loosing their job and all the govt has done about it is to direct their quangos to switch their cant into scaring the life out of the population about swine flu, the next and probably more lucrative money earner for them.
Because people are going to revert to type and start smoking their fags again to ward off the swine flue infections and to calm their nerves in these recessionery times like they have done from time immamorial.
Glad I stopped giving to charities 3 years ago!
I suggest that, as we pay their wages, we email them and ask them to put the paper back up.
So, what happened then that the DOH had no hesitation in putting its name to the disgusting TV ad campaign that named ETS as 'the unseen killer'? If telling the population that smokers are killing them isn't demonisation, I can't imagine what is. No hesitation, either, by the NHS 'brand' victimising smoking staff, visitors and patients on hospital sites (although I notice that the worst offender in my area uses Smokefree North East).
O/T (but only slightly) there was an interesting programme on R4 the other evening about the links between big Pharma and psychiatry. Apparently what denotes a mental illness is decided upon by a group of American psychiatrists (and their classification is used globally). It was highlighted that some of the classification board members had interests in big Pharma and acknowledged that the industry would welcome a broadening of defining factors and pharmacological intervention at an earlier stage of illness.
This, and the NAO report, will come as no surprise to many of us who've known for a while, thanks to exposes by bloggers, of the relationship between big Pharma, HMG and 'fake charities' - but now we've got it in black and white!
There was a strong desire to avoid smokers feeling ‘victimised’ by too many ‘government warnings’. - They failed there, then, didn't they!
They've failed with the ads on TV, myself and people I know are totally fed up with this propaganda and just ignore them, smokers/non-smokers alike. I think the only ones that get excited about them are those with a vested interest, the zealots & the jobsworths whose jobs rely on keeping this victimisation going.
It's strange though that no court in the land will go against the anti-smoking-propaganda-movement, of the smokers that have been to court not ONE has won the day, not one.
Smokers are the only people in the world not to be afforded human rights, you'd have thought that with all the human rights lawyers about now they would've been lining up to line their pockets, but no nothing, why? They can't all be non-smokers or antis. Perhaps the government is giving them taxpayers money not to represent smokers, nothing would surprise me anymore.
As to CRUK, DH & the BHF, as far as I'm concerned they've lost all credibility.
They'd all be better off publishing what won't cause cancer & heart disease. It would certainly save on the contradicatory reports put out day after day, it'd be good for the planet too, save on paper and the hot air that comes out of their mouths.
These people become more evil by the day.
Well Big Pharma certainly get around don't they. I think they have a lot to answer for in the UK also. It seems like we are being run by "charities" and Pharmas.
http://www.change.org/actions/view/stop_opponents_of_health_care_reform_from_distorting_the_truth
Stop Opponents of Health Care Reform from Distorting the Truth
To: Sen. Orrin Hatch UT, Rep. John Boehner OH-08 and Rep. Eric Cantor VA-07, Sen. Mitch McConnell KY, Sen. Orrin Hatch UT, Rep. John Boehner OH-08 and Rep. Eric Cantor VA-07
Sponsored by: Service Employees International Union
The Washington Post just revealed that the Lewin Group - which is commonly cited by Republican lawmakers as an "independent, nonpartisan" think tank and whose research has heavily influenced the health care debate - is owned by a health insurance company.
the graphic visual style of the Australian campaign was felt to be too hard-hitting for the NHS brand
So the NHS is a "brand" now, is it? Like baked beans or something.
This says it all. It's not medicine any more. It's marketing.
Using Simon's links in the article above, I found my way to the Taxpayer's Alliance Report re 'Taxpayer Funding of Lobby Groups'.
I have never heard of it before, and it must be quite distressing for the people who went to so much trouble to investigate and discover the facts to find that all the efforts that they made were totally in vain - that no one gives a damn. Of course, people DO give a damn - the reality, however, is that vested interests conspire to 'reduce the impact' of the report in one way or another.
When I read the Taxpayer's Alliance report about government subsidies given to organisations which promote its policies, I was appalled.
To give one example (bear in mind that the situation is so obscure that I am not certain that what I am about to say is true):
The Arts Council receive massive government subsidies. If it were not for these subsidies, the Arts Council would simply cease to exist.
Now, you would think that the Arts Council would use EVERY PENNY it gets to pay its salaries, promote Art, etc.
NO. The Arts Council gave £27 000 to the think tank Demos. Demos, apparently, has as its raison d'etre, 'thinking about power and politics', and, presumably, produces reports which it forwards to the Gov. It is to be assumed, that one of Demos's ideas would be say how wonderful the Arts Council is! The Gov then has to take notice and, because it has no mind of its own, accepts whatever recomendation Demos makes.
As far as the Arts Council, Demos and the Gov are concerned, it is a virtuous circle! Everyone involved gets their inflated, taxpayer-funded salaries paid on time, and nobody notices what is going on.
And so we move to ASH.
ASH is one of the many organisations subsidised by the Gov. As Simon points out, the subsidy is paid in a round-about sort of way.
Taking the situation one step at a time.
The Dept of Health get from the Cabinet 'carte blanche' to demonise smoking (and smokers!).
The DoH engage professional TV advertising specialists to produce TV ads, true or not, to state the worst possible case.
The DoH does not want to seem to be TOO ant-smoker, since many Labour voters are smokers, and so it gets other organisations to back it up. It arranges funding for these other organisations in a round-about way, say, via the Heart Foundation, for example.
ASH receives funding from the Heart Foundation, which receives funding from the DoH. Clever, don't you think?
If this scenario is true, and I personally think that it is, then IT MUST BE STOPPED.
I go further.
If this is true of the anti-smoking agenda, think what other agendas are also in operation. It is FRIGHTENING to imagine how much tax money is just draining down some sort of plug hole, into the pockets of blatent con-artists.
As we all have the proof now from this report that the govt funds third party organisations (dept of health) to say things it cant say itself, what I'd like to know is whose funding the govt to facilitate the lies.
In my opinion the finger points to the EU mandarins who seem to have a bottomless pit of funds to further their own purpose whenever necessary and as the smoking ban was EU based in the first place who else could be the culprit.
Why not, when it would pay any failed and spineless govt, like in england and (remember the 'world leaders' who launched the smoking ban) ireland, to go along with their bidding when there's a promise of a lucrative and secure job in the EU at the end of it.
For instance, what country would ignore its citizens democratic vote on the Lisbon treaty and demand a rerun only a country that's ruled from Brussels.
Its funny too how, in this revealing report, when they pick a country as an example in regard to the smoking ban they pick the most hardline ones like Australia and California, that really are world leaders where bans are concerned, and never even refer to the more democratic countries like Spain, Amsterdam, Greece etc who put their citizens choice and civil liberties before the diktat of the EU.
Countries who dont have to suffer from pub closures like us, since the introduction of the smoking ban and whose pub trade is thriving as ever.
P.S. Forgot to include in my comment about the 'world leaders' who launched the smoking ban, that their economy is now a basket case.
Junican wrote: As far as the Arts Council, Demos and the Gov are concerned, it is a virtuous circle! ...If this scenario is true, and I personally think that it is, then IT MUST BE STOPPED.
But it's 'virtuous circle', as you say, for the Arts Council, Demos, and the Government. And that's why it won't be stopped. Because the Government is in control, like governments always are.
In truth, however, it's only a virtuous circle for those who are "in the loop" of that circle. For everyone else it's a vicious circle, which gains them nothing and costs them a lot in taxes. This sort of thing strangles an economic system, just like a mafia demanding protection money strangles the society on which it feeds. Economic decline is the only possible consequence. And with economic decline, tax revenues fall, and money for all these 'virtuous' parasitic mafia circles dries up. Governments begin to lose control. Anarchy begins to break out, and things fall apart.
Can't happen soon enough!
Junican, you are beginning to see the light.
Why do you think the govt set up quangos in the first place only to make jobs for the boys to get more votes, then by throwing money at the various so called charities because they're a good cover for setting up their money making schemes by conning everyone into believing its for their own good.
Its a win win situation for them and nice work if you can get it!
But I'm glad to hear that the Taxpayers Alliance has cottoned on to them at least.
Here here - re: Idlex's comment. The TPA now is becoming increasingly active, and long may it continue!
As a pipe and cigar smoker, giving up would be bad for my health as government figures show that both pie and cigar smokers live on average 2 to 3 years longer than non-smokers.
Plus the World Health organisation has previously published reports showing the Benficial effects of SHS.
Of course that science is the wrong sort of science
The more I learn, the sicker I feel.............
Shame we can't use the TPA as the 'core' of a new political party.
I have been deliberately been boycotting charities that lie like CRUK and BHF for many years. I see they've found alternative sources for their misguided projects.
Phil B
So have I. All the charity sacks that come through the letter box go into the bin. End of story.
I have also totally stopped tipping in the pub and elsewhere - apart from my taxi-man who goes out of his way to take me and wife to airport at 4am. And my plumber-man, who fixes things for me without trying to rip me off. And one or two others.
Not the pub staff,s fault? - so what? They work for organisations that did not fight the ban as they should have - level playing field.
Charities? What charity is not passing funds to ASH? I do not know, but until they say that the do not support ASH I will asssume that they do. They will get no share of my money.
To go further, many smokers have withdrawn their blood donations and torn up their organ donor cards.
Must admit I never had one in the first place, but seeing as I am seen as a second class citizen because I smoke, then to my mind, neither my organs nor my blood is good enough, so I will keep the lot, even when it is no longer any use to me!
I have for quite a few years avoided giving to many UK Charities. At first because of the amount of monies collected that go to paying very good salaries (I though it was a charity!! - huge salaries with great holidays), and then because they have become the voice of a government that seem to be controlled by pharmaceutical company’s.
I'm sure great money is still to be made from expensive stop smoking aids, but I think the pharmaceutical company’s have hit on another winner with the so called 'swine flu' How much will it cost the tax payer to pay for the vaccinations soon to be available.
Swine flu reminds me of the last 'Foot & Mouth' outbreak when some livestock who were treated like family pets by some, were dragged out and murdered (probably with chemicals provided by pharmaceutical company’s.
The data used to prove that smoking is the greatest killer to all of us was flawed in the first place. HS own leaflet for cancer patient families states that 35% of cancer is caused by bad diet (however this was 2003 - The leaflets may not say this now).
I am starting to think that only smokers can die from Heart disease or cancer. But we know this is not true. And for smoking ageing you, ask Brad Pitt or Johnny Depp about that.
What’s it like in pubs these days, I don’t know because have only been twice in a pub since the smoking ban – both for funerals
Yes Margaret and dont forget the 'bird flu' epidemic that never was. I guess they needed to get rid of a few birds (of the feathered variety) in China that time for some nafarious reason.
It has now been announced that swine flu jabs will now be given out with the flu jab this autumn.
Get it, double the cost and more money for big pharma.
As for the pubs, you'd be better off drinking on Mars for the old familiar pub scene of old.