This post is part of a blog series focusing on successful health marketing campaigns using multiple communications disciplines and media channels.  If you have a campaign we should highlight, let us know.

I have shared my thoughts about several anti-tobacco social marketing campaigns. In this blog post I share another unique approach to tobacco prevention and smoking cessation.

As health marketers know, health is a hard product to sell. Not everyone values health equally or even at all. However, we do consistently value our youthful vitality. Take a look at this pepsi ad. They have it figured out. Does Pepsi make you forever young? Certainly not.  Does quitting smoking make you live longer? It certainly does. But why aren’t we selling that to the public? I stumbled across a program in England that is attempting to do very that.

Project Vitality markets itself as a holistic health and well-being service in South West Essex. The program’s goal is smoking cessation. But instead of focusing on smoking, it focuses on your overall wellbeing. The campaign avoids negatively framing the smoker by their “dirty” habit and in turn promotes healthy lifestyle through cooking courses, alcohol support programs and exercise classes. The imagery on their website is not that of ugly ashtrays and black lungs, but of love and youthfulness.

When I was in high school, I volunteered for the American Lung Association’s Teens Against Tobacco Use (TATU) program for several years. In this program, we would go into elementary schools and “educate” the kids on the dangers of tobacco use. Every class would invariably have one student who would say something to the effect of “my mommy or daddy is a smoker, is he/she a bad person?” We never knew how to answer this question. Could you imagine the cognitive dissonance of this child who is being preached to that their idol is evil because they smoke?

Media Advocacy and Public Health: Power for Prevention, a 1993 text book that still serves as the basis for many public health social marketing and media advocacy courses, discusses the concept of victim blaming and negatively framing of health messages. Over a decade and a half ago this strategy was declared overtly ineffective, yet the public health community is still guilty of such strategies.

Project Vitality focuses on loving the person, not hating the bad habit. Maybe the Beatles were right; love is all we really need. Health marketing and communication professionals have the power to market all we really need.

Read More from Walking the Path:

1. Promoting Public Health – Not the Public’s Health.
2. Public Health Communicators: You’ve Captured the Flag, Now What Do You Do With It?
3. The Own Your C Anti-Smoking Campaign