Tobacco Control Strategy Planning

Strategy Planning for Tobacco Control Advocacy


	Advocacy Introduction


	Overview Letter

	Introduction to the Series

>	Advocacy Introduction

	Our Advocacy Goals

	Our Target Audience

	Messages Likely to Move Our Target Audience

	Messages That Speak to the Brain and the Heart

	Effective Messengers for Our Target Audience

	Effective Media for Delivering Our Messages

	Getting the Media's Attention

	Making Sure the Media Communicates Our Messages

	Acknowledgments

	Download PDF Version

The longer I am involved in the treatment of tobacco dependence, the more I see the need for advocacy.
	-Dr. Eva Kralikova, the Czech Republic

This guide is offered as a planning tool to you and other tobacco control advocates, especially those in the early stages of tobacco control efforts. It outlines a process to help you develop effective advocacy strategies, particularly media advocacy strategies, as a key element of your policy advocacy planning.

The guide is organized in the form of a powerful set of strategic planning questions that every successful advocate will need to ask and answer-again and again-as your advocacy efforts develop.

	Question 1. What do we want most, now, from our advocacy efforts?

	Question 2. Who has the authority to make it happen? (Who is our target audience now?)

	Question 3. What messages are most likely to move our target audience to do what we want?

	Question 4. How do we develop messages that speak to the brain and the heart?

	Question 5. Who can carry these messages to our target audience most effectively?

	Question 6. What medium will most effectively deliver our messages to our target audience?

	Question 7. How do we get the media to pay attention?

	Question 8. How do we make sure the media tells stories that communicate our advocacy messages effectively?

This guide will examine each of these questions and provide practical guidance in answering them.

Strategic Planning for Tobacco Control Advocacy is also a road map to the extraordinary and successful tactics developed by advocates around the world. Many of these tactics have been captured in companion guides. Among the most useful general guides to advocacy planning are:

The Democracy Owners' Manual, by Jim Shultz (Rutgers University Press, New Brunswick, New Jersey, USA, 2002);
http://www.democracyctr.org/resources/manual/index.htm#train

Advocacy for Social Justice: A Global Action and Reflection Guide, by David Cohen, Rosa de la Vega, and Gabrielle Watson. Based on a legacy of experience from the Advocacy Institute and Oxfam America, this volume is the first comprehensive guide for worldwide social and economic justice advocates. Intended for the practitioner, trainer and student of activism, it explores the elements of advocacy and offers a toolkit for taking action, comprehensive case studies, as well as hundreds of resource listings.
http://www.advocacy.org/publications.htm

The World Health Organization's Tobacco Control Legislation: An Introductory Guide, (Geneva, 2003) provides a valuable starting point for advocates, health officials and others interested in developing tobacco control legislation but unfamiliar with advocacy or lawmaking. It combines a theoretical perspective with a practical, hands-on approach designed to de-mystify the process. It is available online at:
http://www5.who.int/tobacco

Tobacco Control Policy; Strategies, Successes, and Setbacks, edited by Joy de Beyer and Linda Waverley Brigden for the World Bank and Research for International Tobacco Control (RITC), provides real life insights into effective - and ineffective - advocacy strategies. Its editors describe it as "a collection of stories about tobacco control policymaking, that illustrate the roles that can be played by evidence, advocacy, political and social change, partnerships, media, public relations and public pressure, economic interests, and adversity and opportunity." This publication is available online at:
http://publications.worldbank.org/ecommerce/catalog/product?item_id=1485821