Grow Food, Not Tobacco: A hard-hitting global campaign for World No Tobacco Day 2023

Background

Motivating stakeholders to support food production instead of tobacco farming.

Following the success of the World No Tobacco Day campaign in 2022, the World Health Organization (WHO) asked Rooftop to come on board again to create a hard-hitting campaign to mark World No Tobacco Day 2023.

The theme for WNTD 2023 was “Grow Food, Not Tobacco“. The focus was to raise awareness about how the tobacco industry impacts food production and food security around the world.

Challenge

Delivering a hard-hitting, behaviour-changing campaign in just 2 months.

The Rooftop team had just two months to create and deliver the entire campaign including a testimonial video, several digital assets and social media cards.

The testimonial video was filmed on location in Kenya, which required the speedy organisation of various permits, and travel documents for the two-day shoot.

Solution

Inspiring change through a former tobacco farmer’s real-life transformation.

We delivered a hard-hitting online campaign that included a wide variety of assets including a testimonial video and a stop-motion clip, plus a suite of social media clips and other static assets.

The testimonial video.

The testimonial video showcased the inspiring true story of Ms Sprina Robi Chacha, a former tobacco farmer in Kenya. She made the decision to take control of her family’s health and future by farming food crops instead of tobacco.

The video takes viewers on a journey through her first-hand account of how tobacco farming caused family health issues, depleted the farm’s soil, and left very little opportunity for her to grow healthy food to eat.

After switching to iron bean farming, Sprina’s life was transformed. Her family is much healthier, her children can go to school instead of working in the fields, and she earns a much better living from the produce.

The supporting assets.

For the supporting social media assets, report and stop-motion video, the Rooftop team wanted to emphasise how absurd it is that so many people are suffering for the sake of tobacco farming.

Millions of tobacco farmers and their communities are caught in a cycle of poverty caused by farming a product that negatively impacts the planet, affects farmers’ health, and leads to serious health complications for smokers.

Stop-motion video clip for social media.

For the 20-second stop-motion clip, various food items are being chopped up, but as the pieces land on the cutting board, they are transformed into tobacco products. The copy for the clip highlighted the fact that “3M+ hectares of land in over 120 countries are being used to grow tobacco while 300M+ people globally are faced with acute food insecurity.”

Today is #WorldNoTobaccoDay 🚭#DYK❓ 3M+ hectares of land in over 120 countries are being used to grow tobacco while 300M+ people globally are faced with acute food insecurity.

Grow food, not tobacco 🔗https://t.co/hJzSE1P6Hf #NoTobacco #TobaccoExposed pic.twitter.com/YYy5KGws5e
— World Health Organization (WHO) (@WHO) May 30, 2023

Grow food, not tobacco video clip for social media.

This clip shows images of impoverished, hungry children from diverse backgrounds holding food bowls. But instead of being filled with food, the bowls are filled with tobacco products. The copy enforces the idea that growing tobacco results in millions going hungry, end encourages governments to support food production rather than tobacco production.

Exploitation video clip for social media.

This clip features images of the continents around the globe, being stubbed out by cigarette butts. The copy emphasises all the different ways tobacco farming exploits communities and destroys the environment.

Other social media assets included thought-provoking images showing how the tobacco industry exploits children, communities and the environment.

The report.

Rooftop also worked on the design and layout of WHO’s World No Tobacco Day 2023: grow food, not tobacco report. The report was 36 pages and translated from English into 6 more languages.

All together, the testimonial video, report and digital assets created a powerful campaign with a hard-hitting message: Governments and the public need to take immediate action against the tobacco industry, and support food production instead of tobacco farming. “Grow food, not tobacco”.

The Result

The number of mentions of World No Tobacco Day content increased by 33% in 2023 compared to the results in 2022.
WNTD2023 content, including the #TobaccoExposed hashtag, was mentioned over 250K times on social media channels.
On WHO’s Twitter channel, #TobaccoExposed tweets received 2.2M impressions, generated 6.9K total engagements, 125K video views, 1.9K Retweets, 4.2K Likes.
On WHO’s Facebook page, #TobaccoExposed posts reached 3.2M people, generated 23.7K engagements, 17.6K reactions, 109K views.
On WHO’s Instagram page, #TobaccoExposed posts reached 3.8M people, generated 118.6K engagements , 3.2M video views.
On WHO’s LinkedIn page, #TobaccoExposed posts generated 1.2M impressions, 14.8K engagements, 2.5K reposts.
On WHO’s TikTok channel, #TobaccoExposed videos generated 115.8K views, 8.9K engagements.