Creative Concept Testing Designed to Prevent Youth ENDS, Cigarette ad Other Tobacco Product

Creative Concept Testing Designed to Prevent Youth ENDS, Cigarette and Other Tobacco Product Use

Moderator Guide

This research entails assessing youth perceptions of new creative advertising concepts and strategic message concepts. Creative concepts and strategic concepts will be discussed.

Reviewer note: Probes are italicized

I. Creative Concepts and Messaging Probes Discussion Guide

Introduction

[Moderator to introduce and review ground rules with the group]

Thank you for coming here today. Your participation is very important. My name is __________ and I’m from The Sound, a research organization. The purpose of this discussion is to get your thoughts about ads about tobacco use. Since we are focusing on tobacco, when I use the word “smoking” I am referring to smoking cigarettes only. Your thoughts are very important to us and your time today is appreciated. We will have about 95 minutes for our discussion.

As we begin, I want to review a few ground rules for our discussion.

• Your participation is voluntary and you have the right to withdraw from the study at any time.

• You have probably noticed the microphones and/or tape recorder in the room. They are here because we are audio-taping our discussion. I want to give you my full attention and not have to take a lot of notes. The audio files will be transcribed. At the end of our discussion, I have to write a report and will refer to the audio-tapes when writing the report. Additional project staff may hear the tapes at a later date.

• Behind me is a one-way mirror. Some of the people working on this project are observing this discussion so that they can hear your opinions directly from you and take notes so that your opinions are accurately captured. However, your identity and anything you personally say here will remain private to the fullest extent allowed by law. Your name, address, and phone number will not be given to anyone and no one will contact you regarding this study after this discussion is over.

• Please turn your cell phone off or to silent mode. The discussion will last no more than 95 minutes.

• If you need to go the restroom during the discussion, please feel free to do so.

• Most importantly, there are no ‘right’ or ‘wrong’ answers. We want to know your opinions and what you think about the issues we will be discussing. Just a reminder, we are not selling anything and I do not work for the people who are sponsoring this research, so don’t hold back from giving me your honest opinions. Any information shared by you should not be discussed outside of this room.

• Do you have any questions before we begin?

• Why don’t we start with you telling me a little bit about yourself: Tell us your first name and age, and tell us what your favorite TV shows are and why…[Explore responses until group is warmed up]

TV Ads

I’d like to start by talking a little bit about advertising.

• What are your favorite ads on TV or elsewhere, do you have any favorites?

• Have you ever seen an ad telling you about the dangers of using [tobacco product]? If so tell me about it…

Tobacco: Experience and Associations

I’d now like to talk a little bit about smoking…

• We’re going to talk for a bit about using [tobacco product].

• Why do you think people your age use [tobacco product]?

• How popular is [tobacco product] around here? How popular is it with people your age?

• What brands are popular? What flavors are popular? What do people your age call [tobacco product]

• Do you know people who use multiple tobacco products? Tell me about that?

• How do people you know get [tobacco product]? Where do they use it? With whom?

• How addictive do you think [tobacco product] is? How harmful to your health?

Reactions to Creative Concepts and Ads

[Moderator will obtain participants reactions to up ten campaign concepts per 95-minute group. Concepts and order shown will be randomized from group to group.

Now, I’ve got a few ideas for new TV commercials that I’d like to show you. These are video storyboards – with illustrations to show key images of the ad with the audio voiceover for each scene. Eventually these would be filmed with real people, but at this point they are in illustration form only. These videos are simply to communicate the idea behind each ad and they are still in development; try not to get too caught up in the small details.

What we’re looking for here is how you feel about the idea within these ads. We can change the scenery or the people so let’s not worry about that – we want to know if this idea is interesting to you and why or why not.

Once we’ve seen it, I want you to write down what you think the main idea is, and what are the words that come to mind when you see this ad.

It is important to remember that these ads are just illustrations right now, so I’m really looking for your thoughts on the idea.

[Moderator to hand out notepads. Moderator will then show the group the print, digital, or TV concepts in the form of video or printed storyboards. Moderator to repeat the following questions after each ad viewed under this concept.]

• What do you think is the main idea of this ad? Why do you say that? [Probe if necessary: What information is this ad trying to communicate?

• Is there anything confusing or hard to understand about this ad?

• How does this ad make you feel?

• Did you learn anything from this ad? If yes, what did you learn?

  • What do you feel this ad is telling you about [tobacco product]? Please explain.

• Do you feel this ad is directed to you? To people your age? Why or why not?

• Do you find this ad interesting? Why?

• What this add make you think twice about trying or using [tobacco product]? Please explain.

• Would you talk about this ad with friends?

• Would you share this ad with friends? How would you share it? (e.g., forwarding link, tweet, Facebook share.)

• What do you think of the main line in this ad, [insert relevant ad tag line]?

• [Moderator to ask this question after at least two ads are shown] Did this ad catch your attention more than the others under this concept? Why or why not?

Reactions to Creative Concept as a Whole

[Moderator will obtain participants reactions to overall campaign concepts in comparison to one another.]

Now I’d like to get your thoughts on the overall concepts that you saw today. Concepts are the different categories that you saw the ads. [Insert concept name], is one concept that you saw today and here are the ads associated with this concept.

Please write on a scale of 1 to 5, 5 meaning “I really liked this idea” and 1 meaning “I really didn’t like this idea,” what you thought about this idea as a whole.

[Insert second concept name], is another concept that you saw today and here are the ads associated with this concept. [Moderator to repeat the scaling exercise above for each concept shown. Visual to be provided to ensure participants understand which ads fall under each concept].

Now thinking about all the concepts you saw today…

• Which of the ideas do you like the most? Why?

• Which of the ideas do you like the least? Why?

Messaging Probes

• Now that we’ve seen all the ads, I have a few questions to get your impressions on ideas we could use in future ads. I can tell you that all of these statements are “true” – scientists wrote the statements I’m going to read using the latest research. What I want to know is what you think of the statement – is it interesting to you?

• For each group, the moderator will have a randomized list of up to ten of these statements to review with the participants.

[Ask back room observers for questions, thank and close]

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