On 1 March 2006, the Commonwealth introduced graphic health warnings on tobacco packaging.

Quit Victoria, the NSW Cancer Institute and state and territory campaign partners coordinated the launch of the new National Graphic Health Warnings campaign simultaneously in six states and territories in May 2006. The campaign represented a collaborative investment from a range of organisations to develop a national social marketing cessation campaign to capitalise on the introduction of new graphic health warnings on cigarette packs

Strategy:

The most successful campaigns include a range of integrated activities which aim to layer the promotion of campaign messages - whereby mass media creates a branding/message awareness, public relations activities extend the reach of the messages, and community initiatives reinforce the messages and provide the community with more detailed information.

For the first time a communications strategy was developed to support the national graphic health warnings campaign, with a particular emphasis on non-mainstream target groups including the Indigenous community, multicultural communities and health professional groups.

This paper examines how the unpaid media component of the campaign identified and reached these priority groups as part of the broader communications strategy and provided tailored, culturally sensitive background support on the content of each warning.

Conclusion:

The targeted communications strategy supporting the national Graphic Health Warnings Campaign resulted in an increase in unpaid media coverage in mediums traditionally reaching non-mainstream communities and provided a model for using unpaid media to communicate with priority groups in forthcoming social marketing campaigns.