Norway in January

Last month, World Lung Foundation’s Associate Director of Communication and Special Projects Rebecca Perl traveled to Oslo to help the Norwegian government launch a tobacco control mass media campaign. Here, she takes us through the ins and outs of a national campaign launched in a sunless Norwegian winter.

Imagine living in a place where when you have a child, you get a year off from work with pay to take care of your baby. Where the health care and day care is free and so is an education. Where you don’t have to worry about how you will make ends meet when you retire. A social democratic paradise of sorts – rich in natural resources, oil, lumber and fresh seafood – where perhaps your most pressing concern on any given day could be the weather.

WLF's Rebecca Perl (3rd from left) with officials from the Norwegian Cancer Society, State Secretariat, and Ministry of Health.

Now mind you, the weather is no small issue in a place like Oslo. The day I’m there, it snows, rains, sleets and freezes over, so it is difficult to walk. The weather isn’t even what bothers me—that is the darkness. The sun doesn’t rise on that early January day until about 10 am and it is gone quickly, the sky dark again by 3 pm. Less than five hours of light, but I still jump out of bed well before the sun rises because on January 3rd, Norway is launching a tobacco control mass media campaign - their first in nearly a decade - and I am here to help.

A luncheon conference is planned, and some 60 people file into the fine little conference center downtown in the cozy hotel Bristol. On hand are members of the Directorate and the Ministry of Health as well as the State Secretariat and the Norwegian Cancer Society, all here to explain the importance of mass media to the press, public and health advocates. It is their tireless good work that assures this campaign sees the light of this short day and play on into the long nights ahead.

Norwegian officials have pre-tested four anti-tobacco ads, originally created in Australia, to run on TV and in the print media for the next two months. Included in their selections is Sponge, an ad that has now been used to educate people about the harms of smoking in nearly a dozen countries around the world.

There is some concern about the content of the ads. “Won’t they frighten our children?” the TV stations’ producers want to know. More frightening than the ads, I think, are the 5,100 Norwegians who die every year from tobacco use—or the 19 percent who smoke, exposing children and other loved ones to deadly secondhand smoke. More frightening is the nearly 100,000 children who take up the habit across the world each day. That’s why campaigns like these are so critical.

This campaign is a big step because Norway hasn’t run a tobacco education campaign in recent political memory; they must convince people all over again of the crucial role of mass media in encouraging quitting, delaying experimentation and changing social norms around smoking.

I am glad to be there, to offer support and explanations to the press. Yes, I explain, the campaigns must be sustained – one campaign isn’t going to be enough to change smoking rates – but luckily the government has committed money to education campaigns for the next several years. In the end, more than 65 stories are written about the campaign in the first two weeks – not bad for a country of five million. And if they ever need international expertise again, remind me to come back in early summer, when you can rely on some 20 hours of daylight.

Click here to see some of the campaign’s coverage in the Norwegian press!
Click here to see the four Norwegian TV ads used in this campaign.