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12 May – Romy van den Heerik & Charlotte van Hooijdonk

‘Smoking is sóóó…’: an investigation of co-creation in a health campaign

‘Smoking is sóóó Windows XP’ — is one of the slogans of the Dutch anti-smoking campaign ‘Smoking is sóóó’. With this campaign, the Dutch Cancer Society intends to establish non-smoking as the new social norm. Young non-smokers were asked to participate in the campaign by formulating their own slogan starting with the words ‘Smoking is sóóó’, comparing smoking to something old-fashioned. They could contribute by posting their slogans on different social networking sites, such as Facebook and Twitter.

In this talk Romy van den Heerik and Charlotte van Hooijdonk will present their first study on the ‘Smoking is sóóó’ slogans as a case study of co-creation in health campaigns. The material includes different types of contributions from the target audience which often deviated from the campaign slogans. For example, the target audience frequently filled in the slogan from their own perspective, comparing smoking to other (inter)personal social norms: “Smoking is sóóó drinking beer decently”.

Romy van den Heerik and Charlotte van Hooijdonk will also introduce their follow-up study on deliberate metaphor in the ‘Smoking is sooo…’ slogans. The aim of the talk is also to discuss the material together and zoom in on the metaphors in the collected corpus.