Consumer Assessment and Content Analysis of MCRC TV Ads

Audience: The audience for this panel session will have moderate experience in tobacco control, with an interest in the implementation and evaluation of media campaigns. Key Points: The CDC’s Media Campaign Resource Center (http://www.cdc.gov/tobacco/media_campaigns/index.htm) provides an excellent archive of state-sponsored anti-tobacco television advertising. In order to provide MCRC users with information that will help them select ads that best match the goals of their campaign, all MCRC ads were coded for 25 key characteristics that correspond with theoretical and empirical evidence on ad effectiveness. In addition, sixty-five ads were selected for consumer evaluation, across three waves, representing three distinct message themes: cessation, health effects, and secondhand smoke. In each wave, approximately 1200 consumers assessed ads for personal importance, memorability, and perceived effectiveness. The ad characteristic codes were then merged with the evaluation data, to assess which characteristics were associated with consumer ratings of potential effectiveness. Educational Experience: The audience will learn about the significant differences in ad rankings between smokers and non-smokers, across each wave. For the coding analyses, measures of item-specific and overall inter-coder agreement will be presented; in addition, analyses the distribution of characteristics across all 1085 MCRC ads will be presented. Finally, the audience will learn about which ad characteristics were most common among ads that were evaluated by consumers as potentially effective. Benefits: This session will familiarize the audience with key dimensions of ad evaluation, salient content and executional characteristics of ads, and provide the best empirical evidence to date on the relationship between ad characteristics and perceived effectiveness. 1