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Moscow Sponge Winter Campaign
WLF’s Rebecca Perl and Irina Morozova, who both worked with the Moscow Duma on the Moscow Sponge campaign with one of the Sponge LED screens in the Moscow metro.When I arrived in bright, cold, snowy, mid-February Moscow for a series of meetings with Russian partners, I was happy and shocked to see that the LED poster images from the “Sponge” tobacco control mass media campaign were still up in the metro. The campaign was only suppose to run through December and January. The first time I entered the metro, there it was in the heart of Moscow at the Bolshoi Theater station, Teatralnaya, by the exit! You ideally want your ads to be placed at exits because people often think about lighting up as they are leaving the metro. We also know that’s a good place for ads because that’s where the tobacco industry always puts theirs.
Actually I was wondering if the industry might get someone to write a letter complaining about the ugly, graphic anti-tobacco ads in the beautiful, elegant Moscow metro, but so far it hasn’t happened. Maybe they don’t want to call any more attention to the campaign than it’s already gotten. It’s gotten quite a lot: About 90 stories, including TV talk shows, and calls for a smoke-free city. Friends in Moscow told me they had seen the ads on television several times. Another said she quit after seeing the ads.
At present, alas, Moscow is a smoker’s paradise. At least no one smokes in the beloved metro, but It’s hard to find restaurants or hotel lobbies with even a non-smoking section, let alone no smoking. But hopefully that will change in the coming years, with the help of such campaigns and other interventions, as it now has in much of Europe.
Metro posters are only a portion of the “Sponge” campaign that started in December 2009 and will continue in the metro through the end of the year. The campaign was run by the Moscow Duma, with assistance from WLF, and has included television ads, billboards, posters, print and Internet components.
An evaluation of this campaign found that one in two smokers and former smokers in Moscow recalled seeing or reading about the “Sponge” campaign, especially on TV. In addition 43 percent said that the ad made them think about quitting, and nearly 20 percent said they actually tried to quit as a result.
Rebecca Perl
Special Projects Manager
World Lung Foundation
Sponge Campaign, Moscow
Winter 2010