When buzz started circulating around Smokescreen Music Festival — the self-described 'most dangerous festival on earth' — last month, few could have predicted that it wasn't really a festival at all.
On World Health Day, the 'festival' was revealed to be an elaborate anti-smoking campaign cooked up by the Mushroom Group and the Australian National Preventive Health Agency [ANPHA], complete with fake headliners — The Coughin' Nails and M4-CEMA — and promotional videos.
Reaction to the reveal has been mixed, to say the least, but did Mushroom and ANPHA achieve what they set out to? I spoke to Mushroom Marketing Managing Director Carl Gardiner about the ins and outs of the campaign.
What was the genesis of the Smokescreen Festival? I guess the genesis of it was twofold. Number one, just trying to find a different way, an innovative way to get an anti-smoking message out to the younger market. Connected with that was the way that music festivals are traditionally promoted, particularly if one looks at a tour poster and the way it lists all the artists on the bill, and using that to list all the diseases. It was very much about the iconography of traditional festival graphics, combined with the opportunity to use music as a channel to reach young people.
Who did the idea originate with? Was it your baby?
It was something I'd been thinking about for a while. Through dialogue with the Australian National Preventive Health Agency (ANPHA), I was able to put it into a format where I could connect it with an anti-smoking campagin. ANPHA are good people to sit down and talk things through with. [Smokescreen] evolved out of us approaching them and adapting it to suit their strategic objectives.
Speaking of those objectives, who's the target demographic for Smokescreen?
Well, it's basically targeted more at younger people, just by the very nature of the iconography and the connection with music festivals. But in reality, it's there to create awareness of some of the health risks for anyone who smokes. Some of the mediums that we've engaged with are obviously focused on a younger demographic, in terms of music-themed websites and the like, but things like street posters and cafe posters are actually out there in pretty high profile areas; therefore quite a broad demographic sees it.
In one sense, Rohan, we're aware that a lot of people in Australia are already aware of the health risks associated with smoking, but on the other hand, talking to ANPHA, and knowing that nearly 15,000 people per year still die in this country from smoking-related illnesses, made us think, hey, there's still a fair way to go to get the message out to more people.
Why do you think that younger audience is so difficult to reach, when it comes to anti-smoking messages?
I'm not sure they're all that difficult to reach. And by that, I mean there's a lot of pretty savvy media people, Rohan, and different channels to get to them. But we thought this was a way to use a different part of the entertainment spectrum to get to them. I'm certainly not suggesting that Smokescreen, on its own, is going to make a huge difference. But the good thing with something like the Australian National Preventive Health Agency is that they're open to looking at new and different ways.
We still have our traditional media and marketing channels, I'll call them mainstream channels, which I do think can work to generate quite a bit of awareness. But in this case, if someone asked me what we're really trying to do here, what we're trying to do is to get people to think a little bit about the potential negative health effects of smoking, and try to do it in a way that deglamourises smoking a bit. It's just trying to raise the subject again, probably to the same market, but in a different way.
They might have seen the anti-smoking ads on television, they'd probably be aware of some of the messages on the packets — it's pretty hard to ignore them — but we're raising the topic in a different way. It's another one of the many-and-varied touch points that, hopefully, over a period of time, convince more young people, if they are still smoking or considering taking up smoking or giving up smoking... it's another link in the chain that hopefully changes their behaviour.
Louise Sylvan from ANPHA said recently that “Australians have never had more help to quit smoking for good”. That certainly seems to be true. So why haven't that last 15 per cent of people who are smoking given it up? Why are they holding on?
Look, that's a really good question, Rohan, and if I had the answer, if I knew exactly why, or if various federal and state health bodies knew exactly why, then hopefully we wouldn't see anyone smoking. It's an interesting thing, because the illnesses connected to smoking are totally preventable. I was saying to someone the other day, all of us have a personal choice, if we are smokers, to stop. I don't know exactly what it is that makes people smoke. I'd like to think, but I'm certainly not an expert, that maybe we get into it when we're younger for more aesthetic or glamorous reasons. Which is one of the reasons we thought using some contemporary music iconography could make a difference in that area.
But I think the difference is, it's really easy to get into it and be a casual smoker or whatever when you're young, but if you stick with it, it becomes increasingly harder to give it up as you get older. Now, again, I don't know and I can't point to all the figures, but we have seen, over the years, a decrease in the rate of young people smoking. But when you've still got 15,000 people a year dying, we figure that's a pretty good reason to keep chipping away.
Do you think there's still a cool factor associated with smoking, to some degree?
I think there is. I don't think it's as prevalent across the various ways that people consume media and entertainment as it was. I mean, my mother's 84 and she used to smoke as a young girl, and she says that in the early days it was seen as being very stylish and sophisticated. This was a time when people weren't anywhere near as aware as they are now of the negative health implications. And I think we all know some of the iconic images over the years, whether it's of Hollywood movie stars having a cigarette or whatever.
There was a hell of a lot going on in decades past to make the image of smoking cool and sophisticated, and those are things that unquestionably appeal to people. Something we've seen of late, along with things like the plain packaging legislation, are a number of initiatives to strip away the glamour. To strip away the positive imaging and just put the facts out there. I think if you boil this right down to its real basics, the fact is smoking can muck up your health. That will never be glamorous, I don't think. I hope not.
But it's a really interesting area, because there used to be so many ways smoking was promoted, before media laws changed. Sadly, Rohan, I'm still old enough to remember the Marlboro Man! And like everyone else, I thought cowboys were pretty cool when I was a teenager. The Marlboro Man was a cool dude! I can't tell you whether the Marlboro Man massively impacted me. I dabbled with smoking as a kid, but thankfully I didn't continue with it.
Whether it was the Marlboro Man or other things that influenced me, I don't know. I really can't remember. The thing is, what I certainly wasn't aware of as a teenager was just how serious the negative effects of smoking can be.
Do you think a government campaign, or even a series of government campaigns, can ever completely eliminate that cool factor? Or will it always be there to some extent?
Look, again, this is personal opinion, Rohan, because I certainly don't have stats or research on hand. But I think there will always be an element of our community that pushes the boundaries. It's part of the creative approach we took in the early stages of this campaign, referring to Smokescreen as the most 'dangerous' festival on earth. There's an element in some people's behaviour that's drawn to things with dangerous consequences.
It's a very different thing, but look at the fascination the younger demographic has with some of the extreme sports we see. They're really pushing the boundaries, and there's no question in my mind that that behaviour could be classified as dangerous. So there are people who know smoking is dangerous but think, 'Hey, I'm prepared to take the risk, I'll roll the dice', or whatever. I think that outlook on life is always going to be an opinion that parts of the community have.
I do some work in other areas, trying to impact youth attitudes on certain things. Road safety is one. It's hard to think rationally why anybody would want to get in a car with all their mates, with no one wearing seatbelts, and drive at 160 kilometres an hour, but unfortunately we read about horrific accidents where it looks like that sort of behaviour contributed to it. I often say to people, it's just so hard to fathom what that driver was thinking at that time. But it happens.
Whether it's part of some people's DNA, Rohan, I don't know. But I would suspect that, since Adam was a boy, there's always been a segment of communities all over the world that decide to push the boundaries and take what I'd call unnecessary risks. And I'm not being judgemental on that. That's people's right. People have a legal right to smoke. But I'd like to think that very few people now are not aware that it's not actually good for you, but some choose to continue with it. If we knew exactly why, we'd probably come up with more ways to challenge their logic.
The Smokescreen campaign, with uncool acts like The Coughin' Nails and M4CEMA, is obviously trying to make smoking look uncool. Isn't there a fine line between an anti-smoking campaign making smokers look uncool, and an anti-smoking campaign making itself look uncool?
That's a good point. We've taken a particular artistic approach here. We understand that some people will connect with it and find it entertaining, but also informative, and others may think it's just way too uncool. People have a right, when they judge any form of creative expression, to like it or not like it. The main thing is, whether or not people like The Coughin' Nails or M4CEMA, I'd like to think what they take out of it is the connection between smoking and negative health effects.
That's our key objective here, to make sure we get that awareness out there. If the way we've packaged it up and presented it makes people realise that smoking isn't really glamorous, then that's a positive.
A big part of the campaign is the songs that The Coughin' Nails and M4CEMA have recorded. What was the writing process like for those?
We briefed a couple of different songwriters that had experience working in those genres. All we did was give them the standard facts about smoking and some of the negative health implications, and said to them, listen, have a go at seeing how you can express this through a song, or in this case, two different songs. The Coughin' Nails track certainly takes a full-on, tongue-in-cheek, over-the-top approach, and that gave the writers a flexibility in that regard to highlight the negative health implications. Hip hop just gave us a different musical genre to try and get the same message out.
I'm a genuine believer in the power and the craft of songwriting. It just gave us a way to package the message through the medium of music, and one took a much stronger parody approach than the other.
Smokescreen Festival is the festival that wasn't. Was there any consideration given at any stage to actually having a festival? At the very early stages, was that a possibility?
Not in this particular project. It was always seen as a media awareness campaign. Having said that, what I would like to point out more historically here, Rohan, is that live music, and the live music scene in Australia, which is really vibrant both at the festival level and at the pub rock level, in many of those environments over the years, smoking was allowed and now it's not. Particularly in pubs and clubs. So I think there's enough of a behavioural change there.
I remember going to see bands in pubs in the '80s and '90s, and you would definitely come home and have to wash the clothes you wore that night because they just stunk of smoke, whether you smoked or not. Those rooms were often full of smoke. Now, you go to those gigs and you can't smoke inside. So I think, in terms of indoor venues, there's already enough happening in that space.
If the relevant anti-smoking bodies wanted to explore a real live music event that promoted anti-smoking awareness, and I'm talking now about an outdoor festival that was only for non-smokers... I'm not sure. It's not something we've looked at too strongly. I'm not sure if it'd work in an outdoor environment because I'm not disputing anyone's right to smoke. I just think it's not a really cool or sensible thing to do, given the negative consequences that can come of it.
But at the end of the day, some people that go to music festivals outdoors where you can smoke probably do, even if the majority of people who are there probably don't. I know if I'm standing in a large crowd watching great live music, I prefer it when the person next to me isn't blowing smoke in my face.
Did you expect there'd be a backlash when it was announced that there wasn't going to be a festival?
Yes, I did. The way we've done this whole campaign, Rohan, if one looks at the wording we've used and the iconography, there's no doubt that some people, early on, thought this was a real festival. There's no question the people that did would have been disappointed to find out that, in fact, it wasn't.
Part of our teaser campaign to raise awareness for this was to create some speculation, and that certainly happened, to the point where [Mushroom Group Chairman] Michael Gudinski was contacted by certain band managers wanting to know if their bands could be on the bill. Those people, understandably, would then have a right to be a little bit upset when they found out this wasn't a real festival. At the same time, we thought that to use music iconography and that sort of speculation to raise awareness about the negative consequences of smoking... we thought it was worthwhile to do that.
A figure that's come up in a few stories about Smokescreen is that the campaign cost $230,000. Is that figure accurate?
I can't comment on the specific financial side of it. But we were provided a level of funding through the Australian National Preventive Health Agency to put this on, and obviously we've used those funds to allow us to run this project. But we don't discuss specific finances.
Sure. A measure of success for a campaign like this might be its social media reach. When I last checked, Smokescreen Music Festival had 248 likes on Facebook. Are you happy with that, and do you see the social media engagement as being an important part of the campaign?
Look, there's two different things here. Certainly social media, in general, is an important engagement tool with young people these days. But I think in terms of the way we look at this project, we created a number of different digital assets, like Facebook pages for the different artists and the festival, to create the image of a real festival. Because that's what would happen normally with a real festival, there'd be headline acts and Facebook pages.
Whereas the landing page is the page that we've always 'heroed'. It's the website address that's on all our collateral and the like. All those elements combine to generate the overall awareness of Smokescreen, and the negative impacts of smoking. We think the combination of all those elements has created a fair bit of awareness, and certainly that awareness spreads right across from what we're doing with our digital assets to the street posters and the cafe posters that are around.
There's no one element that, in isolation, we think is the measure of how much awareness we're generating. But we certainly think from the overall media interest and conversation and feedback we're getting from people, the awareness of the project has been quite positive.
ANPHA mentioned in the initial press release that, as with any of their campaign activities, the Smokescreen Festival would be monitored for its performance and evaluated to insure it's an effective use of funding. Have you had any discussions with them about that outcome yet? Do you think Smokescreen has been an efficient and effective use of funding?
Oh, look, I'm a bit biased, Rohan, but I'm going to say yes! [Laughs] Look, in regards to your question, we haven't done all that analysis yet. We'll certainly be doing that at the culmination of the project. There are certain elements of this project that are quite readily measurable, in terms of the metrics available, and then there are broader, general awareness elements. As I said earlier, it's very much the sum of the parts. And also, unquestionably, this is a pretty different, innovative approach to generate awareness.
Certainly, once we look through the overall project at the end of the process, I'm sure we're going to see certain areas and think, 'Look, that worked more successfully and got the message out in a more effective way than that did'. We won't know that until we sit down and look at the final analysis. But it's very much designed with a number of different touch points to a number of different channels.
Yeah. I think that's everything we need; did you have anything you wanted to add?
No, I just wanted to say I really appreciate your interest in it. It is something that's quite different, certainly in my 30-odd years in the music industry putting together different projects, we've never done anything quite like this. We're just really grateful for the interest and support from the media. It's just one of those things where, until this has run its full course, I honestly can't tell you whether one of the songs made more of an impact than the other, or, you know, how big an impact the posters had.
But the good thing with any of those touch points, the thing that's consistent with all of them, is that if someone's aware of them, then they're certainly aware that smoking isn't very good for you.
