THE GARBAGE FACE
OF THE ANTISMOKING GARBAGE

PR 06/24 0600 HealthPartners Anti-Smoking Campaign for Teens ...

HealthPartners Anti-Smoking Campaign for Teens Wins National Award

/ADVANCE FOR RELEASE AT 6 A.M. EDT, TUESDAY, JUNE 24/

/ADVANCE/BLOOMINGTON, Minn., June 24 /PRNewswire/ -- HealthPartners today was selected as the recipient of the American Association of Health Plan's (AAHP) 1997 Community Leadership Award for its teen anti-smoking campaign. The AAHP is a national organization representing more than 1,000 HMOs, PPOs and similar health plans that provide care to more than 140 million Americans. AAHP is based in Washington, D.C.

AAHP presents the Community Leadership Award annually to the health plan that has contributed the most to enriching the quality of life in the community it serves. George Halvorson, HealthPartners president and CEO, accepted the award today at the AAHP annual conference in Seattle.

Television Commercials Target Teens

In winning the award, AAHP recognized HealthPartners for its dedication to improving the health of its community. In 1996, HealthPartners launched an aggressive and highly-successful counter-tobacco promotional campaign targeting teens. The campaign included bold, imaginative MTV-style television commercials, radio ads, billboards, events and other activities designed to show teens that smoking isn't cool.

HealthPartners discovered that teens respond better to ad campaigns that address their social concerns than they do to warnings about risks of cancer or heart disease. Armed with that knowledge, HealthPartners created a series of anti-tobacco ads, the first of which was entitled "Garbage Face." In the ad, a teenage girl smokes and then talks about her heartthrob. As the boy approaches her she says, "Hi," and he responds, "Two words: breath mint." While the girl continues to talk, her face morphs into a face of garbage. By the end of the ad, her face becomes an ashtray and viewers get the message that smoking makes your breath stink and hurts your sex appeal. HealthPartners also made the ads available to health plans across the nation at a nominal cost to cover actors' residuals and different health plan logos.

A Comprehensive Effort

HealthPartners also worked with teens, schools, media and the anti-tobacco community, government, health officials and other community partners to work on a broad smoking prevention and cessation agenda. Other activities included working with Smoke-Free 2000, an anti-tobacco organization, which launched a grassroots team to encourage local communities to pass strong ordinances preventing youth access to tobacco.

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