Truth’s #Bigtobaccobelike gets mixed reviews on Twitter

October 16 2015

By @G_Parsons33

Published in Analysis

American anti-tobacco group Truth caused quite a stir this weekend with their latest campaign “Big Tobacco Be Like”. Already well known for their off-the-wall videos targeting young smokers, the group’s new campaign aimed to raise awareness in young people about how tobacco companies profit from them smoking.

Truth aimed high by combining astute TV targeting with a plethora of Twitter advertising tools to obtain high levels of engagement for their newest message. We used the Visibrain platform to try to determine the extent of the campaign’s success on Twitter.

As was the case with previous campaigns such as the tinder-themed song “Left Swipe Dat” and this August’s “It’s a trap” video, “Big Tobacco Be Like” relied heavily on social media influencers.

The videos created for the campaign are based on the Vine “Be like” meme, and feature Vine stars Logan Paul, Allicattt, Christian DelGrosso and Jerry Purpdrank bringing down popular excuses teens have for smoking.

A question of timing

The campaign didn’t quite get off to a flying start. The ads were first run during the season finale of “Fear The Walking Dead” on October 4th. In spite of the purchase of a Promoted Trend and tweets from the video’s stars (such as the one from Jerry Purpdrank @purpdrank as seen below), this first part of the campaign got only 608 tweets in total.

A overview of the Twitter stream for the first part of the truth campaign

It took until the following weekend for the campaign to find its feet. Once again, the ads were shown in tandem with a popular TV series; this time during the season premiere of the wildly successful show The Walking Dead. Combined with a Promoted Trend and promoted tweets to keep the conversation going on Twitter, we can see from the screenshot below that the results were far more impressive:

A overview of the Twitter stream for the second airing of the Big Tobacco Be Like ads

Compared to the results obtained on October 4th, the success of last weekend’s campaign was undeniable.

A closer look at the data for Twitter activity around Truth on October 11th reveals that the ads shown during the The Walking Dead premiere generated 7,322 total tweets by 5,262 users, making for a total of 15,444,063 impressions. That’s over 10 times the amount of tweets obtained on October 4th.

From a purely numerical point of view, the #bigtobaccobelike Twitter campaign seemed to obtain good results: there were large numbers of engagements on Twitter and the Youtube videos have millions of views each. But what did audiences really think?

##Twitter rallies to the cause

The #Bigtobaccobelike videos may have a light, humorous tone, but the public health issue they address is a serious one. As well as retweeting the videos, many chose to support their cause using different hashtags. Using the Visibrain platform’s Focus feature, we can take a look at the hashtags that appeared the most frequently in tweets about #bigtobaccobelike last week.

Top hashtags used in tweets about the bigtobaccobelike campaign

Even though #bigtobaccobelike was by far the most commonly used hashtag for the campaign, other hashtags also stand out, such as various hashtags promoting e-cigarettes.

The #tobaccoto21 hashtag also stands out. By clicking on the hashtag, we automatically filter on all of the tweets that used it, giving us the context in which it was used.

The most retweeted post using the #tobaccoto21 hashtag was Hawaiian Senator Brian Schatz @SenBrianSchatz, advocating a change of law to raise the legal age for the purchase of tobacco to 21:

By filtering on users with the highest audiences who tweeted the hashtag, we can see that it was also used by several anti-smoking Twitter accounts such as @CounterTobacco and @Tobacco21:

Users who tweeted about bigtobaccobelike using the tobaccoto21 hashtag

Some even used the #NRA hashtag to compare the need for tobacco control to the need for gun control:

“Big Tobacco be like” certainly had its supporters, however, its quirky image wasn’t to everyone’s taste.

Some harsh criticism for the campaign

Trying for a trendy vibe to connect with young audiences always comes with the risk of looking a bit cheesy, and Twitter just wouldn’t be Twitter without a bit of sniping.

If we look at the top tweets for the campaign on October 11th, we can see that one of the most popular tweets was a very negative post from @drogoris:

The most retweeted posts for the bigtobaccobelike campaign

Here are some other negative opinions of the campaign that appear in the top 20 most-retweeted:

If we look at the top expressions used in tweets mentioning the @truthorange Twitter handle, a few weak signals also come through in the word cloud, such as “terrible campaigns” and “scare tactics”:

The most common expressions used in tweets about bigtobaccobelike

Love them or hate them, the #bigtobaccobelike videos certainly didn’t go unnoticed on Twitter last week. In spite of some negative reviews, the videos have been viewed millions of times, inspiring audiences to react and engage.

As we have seen before with cases such as KFC’s controversial decision to revive Colonel Sanders, a negative reaction can often be preferable to no reaction at all.

Header image source: Screenshot from the Youtube video “#BigTobaccoBeLike “College”

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Published in Analysis