Breaking up with tobacco: An innovative approach to reaching LGBT populations

Introduction: Developing a "quit smoking" campaign to reach the Lesbian Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender (LGBT) audience in Los Angeles County media market is a sizeable and costly challenge. LA County is the second largest media market in the country, accounting for 18 million people and 5.8 million households. Additionally, the cost to run media campaigns in the LA market can be immense - especially when targeting niche populations.

Approach:The Los Angeles County Department of Public Health launched Break Up wtih Tobacco, an innovative, LGBT-specific anti-smoking campaign that utilized social media (e.g., Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, YouTube, Flickr, and traditional media), paid advertising (e.g., LGBT magazines and geo and behavior targeted ads Facebook), in-bar and in-gym advertising, and street team interventions (e.g., bar takeovers, promotional items, photoboth photos).

The goals of the campaign were 1) leverage modern communication ecology with social currency (mobile images), triggers (emotional and others), and word of mouth and shareability and 2) drive LGBT audience to LALastDragLA.com or LAQuits.com to learn about quitting resources. 

Results: We will discuss final outcome data and highlight the most effective strategies of the campaign. However, preliminary data indicates that the Break Up with Tobacco campaign successfully moved the LGBT audience to take the desired action: more than 4,800 page views on LAQuits.com, 368,929 Facebook impressions of content associated with the websites, and an estimated 309,9000 AI 18+ impressions associated with street team interventions. 

Discussion: Break Up with Tobacco was not a typical paid advertising campaign, however, it proved to be an inexpensive way to effectively reach the LGBT audience with anti-smoking messages.