Background

In November 2012, the National Assembly (NA) of Vietnam passed the country's first comprehensive tobacco control legislation.1 Following guidelines of the Framework Convention on Tobacco Control, the legislation was implemented from 1 May 2013 and included smoke-free public places, graphic pack warnings, increased taxes on cigarettes and establishment of a sustainable health promotion fund.1 This public health landmark resulted from a large-scale, long-term policy, advocacy and communication effort, which included the campaign described here. The effort was conducted by the Government of Vietnam and local and international non-governmental organisations, and coordinated by the Vietnam Standing Committee on Smoking and Health (VINACOSH).

In May to June 2012, directly leading up to the NA's vote on the tobacco control law, World Lung Foundation (now Vital Strategies) and VINACOSH developed and implemented a tobacco control mass media campaign to educate the public about the harms of tobacco and secondhand smoke and to garner support for the legislation. Compared with prior campaigns with budgets of up to US$200 000, this campaign had a significantly smaller budget of about US$50 000. The majority was spent on message dissemination and media buys (table 1). The campaign used mass media communication materials that built on two prior national TV campaigns in 2010 and 2011. In addition to traditional television broadcasting, which was supported by provincial-level television, radio, LCD screens and loudspeakers, the campaign targeted Vietnamese youth using online and mobile new media channels, which drove electronic signatures for a mobile and online ‘petition’. In Vietnam, smartphone usage (36%) is found to be lower than overall mobile phone usage (93%), but growing rapidly: 3G data subscriptions nearly doubled from 11.9% in 2012 to 21.4% in 2015.2 Estimates suggest that 44% or nearly 40 million Vietnamese people are online, and 57% of internet users actively use Facebook.2 …