Imagine Oregon without Big Tobacco: A Community-Driven Campaign

What was the challenge?

Every year, the tobacco industry spends more than $90 million in Oregon to market its deadly products—focusing most heavily on communities of color, communities living with lower incomes, and people under stress. With Oregon’s 2021 tobacco tax increase, more than 90 new community grantees joined the movement to stop the industry and help people in Oregon break free from Big Tobacco. Those grantees—community-based organizations and local public health agencies—are the spark behind Imagine Oregon without Big Tobacco, a statewide campaign that invites people to take action in a strength-based, community-centered way.

What did we do?

Smokefree Oregon, the movement-building strategy for Oregon Health Authority’s (OHA) Tobacco Prevention and Education Program, had the opportunity to create a new mass media campaign. This is an important strategy to shift social norms, shape policies and environments, and encourage people to take new actions—all in service of helping people quit and preventing tobacco use overall. OHA invited grantees to form the Addressing Commercial Tobacco Advisory Committee to design the first community-driven tobacco cessation and prevention campaign, centering community priorities and voices.  

Together, through unique and shared perspectives, the committee developed campaign goals, objectives, audiences, messages, creative concepts, and calls to action. Focus groups and a survey of people across Oregon helped the committee understand which messages and creative stories would best motivate people to join the movement.

Imagine Oregon without Big Tobacco focuses on possibility, self-determination, and the fact that, together, people in Oregon are stronger than Big Tobacco. Through vibrant illustrations from Oregon artists, the campaign invites people into the future, and then links to an actionable website where they can be part of making the vision a reality.

Alongside the committee, five additional teams were formed to consider specific stories, messages, and needs within communities where the tobacco industry markets especially heavily. These teams, made up of community-based organizations and people with lived experience, represented Black/African American/African immigrants, Asian communities, Latino/a/x communities, LGBTQIA2S+ people, youth, and individuals living with mental health conditions.