What does it take to break a bad habit?

A large portion of the Danish population still smokes daily, despite being aware of the significant health risks and feeling the impact on their personal health.

20% of people in Denmark continue to smoke despite the known health risks. While much focus has been placed on preventing adolescents from starting, the substantial number of daily smokers aged 30-59 is often overlooked. Sund By Netværket aims to address this issue and provide the 75% of smokers in this age group who want to quit with effective support.

The Danish government offers free tobacco cessation services that are 4-5 times more effective than quitting on your own. Despite their proven effectiveness, these programs are underutilized. Lack of awareness and misconceptions about what the programs entail make it difficult to recruit smokers who need help breaking the habit.

Sund By Netværket approached IS IT A BIRD to gain a better understanding of this target demographic and to determine which messages and values could motivate them to take action. Additionally, we explored how to encourage them to utilize the national cessation services.

We conducted research with smokers in their usual smoking environments and situations using a combination of digital diaries and in-depth ethnographic home interviews.

Through digital diaries, we captured the moments when individuals decided to smoke and explored the reasons behind their behaviour. This was followed by in-depth at-home interviews, where we delved into their deeper thoughts about smoking, the complexities of addiction, and the ongoing conflict between the desire to smoke and the awareness of its negative health effects.

By gaining an understanding of smokers’ lives and the role cigarettes play in them, we identified why their motivation often fails to translate into action and when the prospect of quitting seems most relevant to them.

We combined insights from this ethnographic fieldwork with a review of research on tobacco control mass media campaigns and case evidence from both Danish and international contexts. This comprehensive approach helped us develop opportunity spaces for effective messaging and future campaign concepts.

The collaboration led to a clearer understanding of the target demographic of smokers and the types of messaging and communication most likely to drive action. Through the development of three personas, IS IT A BIRD demonstrated how to address three distinct value-based segments and identified effective hooks and drivers to motivate them.

These personas provided a common language and a clear tool for developing creative content, formats, and messaging for an upcoming national campaign aimed at encouraging smokers to quit. Foundational insights into smoking were distilled from the commonalities across the three personas, creating a unified reference point to build upon and share for a deeper understanding of smoking and addiction.

Additionally, a condensed review of literature and case evidence facilitated Sund By Netværket’s ability to effectively use and share key findings with collaboration partners, aiding in the structuring of impactful mass-market media campaigns to promote tobacco cessation.

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