on vanity (“Don’t smoke: it will give you yellow teeth”). Some highlighted athletics (“Don’t smoke: it will make you worse at sports”), while others focused on peers (“Don’t smoke: you’ll get left out”).
But, regardless of flavor or style, the subtext was the same. Whether explicit or not, there was always a request, demand, or suggested action: We know what’s best for you and you should behave accordingly.
And it wasn’t working.
So rather than assuming they had the answers, Wolfe’s team asked teens for their perspective. In March 1998 they convened a Teen Tobacco Summit, where students came together to talk about and understand the problem.
And rather than tell teens smoking was bad, Chuck and the organizers let the teens take the lead. All the organizers did was lay out the facts: how the tobacco industry used manipulation and influence to sell cigarettes; how companies manipulated the political system and used sports, television, and movies to make smoking seem aspirational. Here is what the industry is doing, they said. You tell us what you want to do about it.
Many things came out of that summit. A new statewide organization called Students Working Against Tobacco, or SWAT, was formed to coordinate youth empowerment efforts. Workbooks were created to bring information about the tobacco industry into the classroom (e.g., if a carton of cigarettes generates $2 of profit, how much money would a tobacco executive make if they sold fourteen cartons of cigarettes?). And a different approach to media was formulated.
Take one of the first “truth” ads that ran soon after. Two regular teens, sitting in their regular-looking living room, call a magazine executive to ask why the publication accepted tobacco advertising, given they have a youth readership.
The executive says the magazine supports anti-tobacco ads, but when one of the teens asks whether the magazine would run some as a public service, the executive says no. When asked why not, he says, “We’re in this business to make money.” When the other teen asks, “Is this about people or about money?” the executive responds incredulously. “Publishing is about money,” he says before quickly hanging up.
That’s it.
The ad didn’t demand anything from teens. There was no message at the end telling them not to smoke, what to do, or what would or wouldn’t make them cool. The spot just let them know that, whether they realized it or not, cigarette companies were trying to influence them—and that the media was in on it. Rather than trying to persuade, the messages simply laid out the truth and left it up to teens to decide.
And decide they did.
* * *
In just a few months, the “truth campaign,” as the program came to be known, led more than 30,000 Florida teens to quit smoking.11 Within a couple years it cut teen smoking rates in half. It was the most effective large-scale prevention program. Ever.
The pilot program quickly became a worldwide model for youth tobacco control. When a national foundation was formed to eliminate teen smoking, it adopted Florida’s strategy and converted “truth” into a national campaign. And it hired Chuck Wolfe to come on as its executive vice president.
Over the course of the national campaign, teen smoking rates dropped by 75 percent. Teens were less likely to start smoking, and those who already smoked were less likely to continue. The program prevented more than 450,000 youths from smoking in the first four years alone and saved tens of billions of dollars in health care costs.
In fact, the truth campaign was so effective in changing minds that in 2002 the program received one of strongest testaments to the success of their approach: Tobacco companies filed a lawsuit to stop it.
The truth campaign got teens to stop smoking because it didn’t tell them to stop smoking. Wolfe understood that teens were smart enough to make their own decisions. But, more than that, he understood that by letting them make those decisions, rather than telling them what to do, they’d be more likely to make good decisions in the end.
Wolfe let teens chart their own path to his destination. By encouraging them to be active participants rather than passive bystanders, Chuck made them feel that they were in control. Lowering their radar and increasing action.12
To reduce reactance, catalysts allow for agency—not by telling people what to do or by being completely hands-off, but by finding the middle ground. By guiding their path.
Four key ways to do that are: (1) Provide a menu, (2) ask, don’t tell, (3) highlight a gap, and