Background: Young smokers are often unmoved by warnings of long-term health consequences of smoking as they believe they have time to quit “before it gets to that”. However they remain sensitive to short-term cosmetic consequences, such as bad breath, smelly hair and bad skin. Furthermore a common word-association young smokers provide for smoking is “disgusting”. Healthway funded CBRCC to develop of a series of near-finished television advertisements to strengthen this association by overtly associating smoking with other things young people nominated as disgusting, including excrement, cockroaches and maggots. Pre-testing suggested the advertisements performed well with adolescents. The Cancer Council WA is now interested to know how well the advertisements test with young adults for potential use as a component of its Make Smoking History campaign.

Method: A web-link to the advertisements will be emailed to the Curtin University student list (n=39,000). Recipients will be encouraged to view the advertisements and forward the email onto friends. The number of viewings and origin of viewers will be automatically tallied. Viewers will be invited to complete an on-line survey gathering reactions to the advertisements and demographic information. The trial will last from February to May 2007.

Results: Conclusions: Implications: The results will assess message and execution effectiveness of the “disgust” advertisements with young adults, and also the distribution technique in reaching the target audience. If the trial proves successful it could herald a novel and effective tobacco control message and also an economical method of reaching the target audience, while bypassing broadcasting sensitivities.