Truth is a national campaign devoted to helping eradicate teen smoking in the United States. About a year ago, in August of 2014, Truth launched a campaign called “Finish It”. The “Finish It” campaign relied heavily on social media and online content to help inspire teens and young adults to be the generation that does not smoke. According to their research, only 8% of teens smoke and Truth believes that with the use of social media, teens have the ability to stop completely.
One look at the homepage of Truth’s eye-catching website sends the message that Truth is a “hip” organization and knows the internet just as well as teens do. The first image that pops up is a group of online personalities such as Ryan Higa while a surprised cat is superimposed into the image. Immediately the website introduces the phrase “It’s a trap” and shows #itsatrap in the bottom left corner. If the viewer was curious at all about what the phrase meant, they need only click the obvious play button on the right side and a meme-filled video will play. Not only does the video show memes, but it has people actually dressed up as meme characters to give memes a sort of three-dimensional life they haven’t had before.
With the same idea of reaching out to a generation of internet lovers, Truth came out with a video called “Left Swipe Dat”. “Left Swipe Dat” refers to the fact that on social dating apps, a left swipe means you are not interested. According to Truth, if someone has a profile picture on their dating app in which they are smoking, they are half as likely to get a swipe right.
The video features colorful graphics, a high production value, and attractive young starts from around the web. Fifth Harmony, Grace Helbig, and King Bach all make appearances and claim their hatred for cigarettes in profile pictures. Not only did Truth get the people in the video to promote the campaign on their own channels, other YouTubers then created their own versions of the music video, covers, or parodies. Whether viewers loved or hated the videos, a quick search in YouTube for “Left Swipe Dat” results in multiple videos about the same message.
The rest of the homepage for Truth’s website continues to try to attract young people. The amount of call to actions on the homepage is certainly more than an average website. There are sections on how to include the company’s logo on your profile picture, how to photoshop objects into a photo to cover up a cigarette, and even buy a pair of shoes made in partnership with Vans. The shoes themselves are colorful and fun, but include the slogan “#finishit” near the heel of the shoe. There is also a section for videos in which they have celebrity cameos and even do a video focused on the fact that Syracuse University recently went tobacco-free. They boast that last year’s number one party school is leading the way by having a no-cigarette policy. Overall, they market their campaign as the #truth and claim they will fight not only against teen drug use, but also against “Big Tobacco”. While it is easy to see how their anti-cigarette message could reach teens, it is not clear how they plan to take on Big Tobacco.
Truth does have an Instagram account called “Truth Orange”. The company mostly posts facts about cigarette use with interesting graphics but also tries to jump onto trends. For instance, Grace Helbig was one of “Left Swipe Dat”‘s more famous talents, so when she hosted the Streamy Awards, they did a throw back Thursday just showing Graces part in the video. After looking at Truth’s Twitter, Instagram, and YouTube, I deduced that a lot of the followers aren’t impressed.
Heading over to the ever-interesting YouTube comments, I found only negative ones. On their video about how cigarette use “is a trap”, most of the comments make fun of Truth for trying to reach teens at a relatable level. According to the commenters, Truth’s references are out-of-date and some make the suggestion that the video itself has a bigger chance of causing cancer than cigarettes.
Sure, the video has 4 million views and over 25,000 likes, but those 15,000 dislikes belong to the most vocal people. While I found the campaign interesting and the song catchy, I doubt my 15-year-old cousins have ever even heard of this group or initiative. I surely hope that young teens aren’t on Tinder left swiping or right swiping anyone.
Unlike a human rights organization, Truth is trying to take down an extremely profitable business. As the website says in its section about de-cigaretting photos: Holding a cigarette in you profile picture turns you into a walking advertisement for Big Tobacco. Their calls-to-action are great, but as someone knew to this campaign, I can’t figure out what they want me to do day-to-day. A recycling campaign can easily plan social media posts that will have immediate effect. A simply tutorial on how to compost would go far on social media while a general ask to eradicate teen smoking only serves to confuse the consumers more. Besides making the choice to not smoke yourself, the website offers very little help on how to resist Big Tobacco companies and talk to your friends about quitting.
If you navigate to Truth’s “Track Progress” page, it is obvious that Truth does well on social media. There are statistics everywhere and ticking numbers telling the viewer how many followers Truth has accumulated.
While there are many good things about the “Finish It” campaign, the message is so broad that short-term objectives are not clear to the consumer. Bombarding teens with ideas about taking down Big Tobacco and getting everyone to quit smoking once and for all could be causing an overload as opposed to a movement.