As did the first question, asking this question will help narrow your focus. Your goal now is to identify the target audience for your advocacy.

At this stage in your planning, you must ask exactly whom your message needs to reach now to achieve your advocacy objectives.

The General Public

In a country in an early stage of tobacco control, the public is often not yet fully aware of the severity of the health hazards from tobacco use. Here, tobacco control advocates may need to broaden their target audience beyond government decision makers and carry their message to the general public as well.

This has been the experience of Dr. David Bristol, a surgeon and tobacco control advocate who works in the Caribbean with the St. Lucia Cancer Society. Dr. Bristol said of his challenge: "I think many of the public are really not aware of the basic health dangers of smoking. They still think it's a kind of a fanciful idea that has been trumped up by somebody in a laboratory."

In 1995 in Vietnam, qualitative research showed little public support for tobacco control policies. The Vietnamese government has successfully banned virtually all tobacco advertising, but few smoke-free areas exist today, even in schools and hospitals. Why? Widespread ignorance of the health effects of passive smoking, and a generally positive attitude toward cigarettes, still stand in the way. Clearly, advocates need to build public support before tobacco control policies can be implemented effectively.

Individuals

At later stages, once the public has been educated and supports your policy objectives, your target audience might well be a single individual.

Perhaps your only target is the president or prime minister whose ties are too close to the tobacco industry and who is blocking tobacco control action as a result. Your target could be the chairperson of a key parliamentary committee who needs to be convinced to schedule hearings on a proposed law. You could have a slightly broader target audience, such as every member of the cabinet, who must decide whether or not to go forward with a law proposed by the health minister. Your target might be even broader: every Member of Parliament.

Even when you direct your message to the public, you need to identify which segment of the public you intend to reach. If your immediate objective is to put public pressure on the national government to move forward, your target audience is not the general public. You should target your message directly to an active and influential segment of that audience: members of society who pay attention to public affairs and can influence the decision makers. Political scientists call this audience the "influentials" or "opinion leaders."

Doctors

Medical doctors can be opinion leaders. Dr. Thomas Glynn, director of of Cancer Science and Trends at the American Cancer Society, has noted that "no country in the world has made significant progress in curbing the tobacco epidemic without its doctors understanding that their professional responsibilities require that they take a leadership role in advocating for comprehensive tobacco control laws."

If few doctors in your country are actively engaged in tobacco control advocacy, then your country's doctors must become one of your first target audiences.

When a landmark judgment by the Indian Supreme Court banned smoking in public places, the Cancer Patients Aid Association in Mumbai launched a smoke-free workplace campaign ultimately aimed at employers. Campaigners sought endorsements from a narrow target group: leading bankers and industrialists in Mumbai. The result was that these employers influenced thousands of employees to personally endorse the campaign to make their own workplaces smoke-free. In this case, the individuals with the authority to make it happen, the target audience, were the influential business leaders.