Smokefree Social: an Innovative Social & Digital Intervention Connecting Smokers in Online Groups to Become Smoke-Free

Background:

Young adults are less likely to use evidence-based treatments for smoking cessation. Smoke-Free Social (SFS) is a Facebook-based quit group modelled after a randomized control trial called the Tobacco Status Project (TSP), a motivationally tailored smoking cessation intervention for young adults. TSP aimed to verify 7-day abstinence from smoking through Facebook quit groups and had a significant effect on tobacco use abstinence.

This session will discuss how SFS adopted the TSP model and leveraged existing brand affinity of a well-known young adult tobacco prevention campaign called “Commune” to implement a culturally-relevant Facebook-based quit program for high-risk young adult Hipsters.

Research indicates Hipsters tend to be trendsetters, enjoy live music and art, and have been targeted by the tobacco industry. Commune’s goal is to align Hipster values with living tobacco-free. By leveraging community and art into its messaging, Commune shows its audience how tobacco destroys creative expression and goes against their values.

SFS relied on Hipster audience insights and Commune’s online targeting strategy to reach, recruit, and engage high-risk Hipsters in facilitated private Facebook quit groups.

Program background:

The media strategy included a mixture of Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, and Google ads to drive Hipster smokers to a dedicated landing page where they signed up for one of two groups, either “ready to quit” or “not yet ready”.

Qualified participants completed baseline surveys and began to receive daily tobacco-free messages customized for the Hipster audience. To increase engagement, participants were financially incentivized to complete the surveys and comment on the daily posts.

Within 3 months of launching, SFS had 15 active online quit groups and a total of 396 participants, surpassing the initial goal of 150.

The recruitment strategy was evaluated to understand how each ad type contributed to the number of signups and how effectively the landing page moved interested applicants through the registration process. Paid Social Media ads accounted for 59.17% of traffic to the SFS site while Paid Search accounted for 34.75%. The SFS landing page effectively captured the audience’s attention resulting in a very low bounce rate (35.16%) compared to the industry average (80-85%).

Evaluation Methods and Results:

Follow up surveys were conducted upon completion of the groups to assess changes in tobacco use and intent to quit. Approximately 60% of those that joined commented on at least half of the daily posts, and took the final survey.

Hipsters in the post-group sample reported significant decreases in past 30 day cigarette use (94% to 73%).

The evaluation also assessed past 7 day cigarette smoking which significantly decreased by 21% (81% to 60%) among Hipsters. Additionally, the percentage of respondents reporting they did not smoke any cigarettes in the past 7 days increased by 126% after the SFS groups

Conclusions:

Young adults are less interested in traditional cessation methods, but that doesn’t mean they are not interested in cessation.

Implications for research and/or practice:

Developing new cessation tools that use digital tools can increase young adult cessation.