The World Health Organization (WHO) and the Global Center for Good Governance in Tobacco Control (GGTC) spend a lot of time harping on Big Tobacco's marketing tactics. However, their latest oddball scheme is a textbook example of manipulating our youth.
The Social Reels Challenge is an entirely out-of-touch competition offering cash for social media videos that criticise tobacco marketing tactics. The total prize money is $15,000; the grand prize is a tidy $5,000. At least they’re not begging teens to do a dance challenge: small mercies and all that.
The whole thing is a strange and flagrant attempt to demonstrate grassroots support for the WHOs tobacco control message. We can only imagine how much running the campaign will actually cost. The prize money will be a mere fraction of the total Bloomberg Bucks that have been diverted away from actual youth health crises, like the 22 adolescents (14-18 year-olds) that die in the US each week from drug overdoses.
Let’s take a deeper look.
Redefining youth
From the Social Reels Challenge website:
“We're inviting entries from those 35 years old and under to recognize a ‘for youth by youth’ approach.”
The United Nations defines youth as “persons between the ages of 15 and 24 years.” However, the WHO’s increasingly Orwellian tendencies have added 11 years to the upper limit. Yes, now you can finish uni, be a decade into a full-time job, raising your own kids, and still be considered a youth in WHO-land.
I think the issue is that teen smoking is shrinking so fast that the WHO feels forced to up the definition of youth to 35 so they can keep up the charade and fudge “youth” vaping or smoking numbers, and all so they can justify their existence.
The fine print
The WHO has a lot of money to waste on pushing its message. Despite that, they’re so desperate for organic support that they’re willing to sink $15,000 into getting a boatload of what they hope will look like grassroots content.
Also, from the terms and conditions of the competition:
“By submitting an entry, each participant agrees to grant the World Health Organization (WHO) and the Global Center for Good Governance in Tobacco Control (GGTC) and its assignees/assignors the right, without obligation, to use the video materials for any purpose as per WHO or GGTC’s discretion.”
Six content creators will get $2000 to $5000. For the rest of the desperate “youth” that sell their credibility up the river, there is nothing. But the WHO can use your video where they instruct you to say a very specific thing for money. That is, as they say, the price of entry.
I’m willing to bet that they’ll encourage these youths to post their videos online, flooding TikTok with orchestrated anti-tobacco messaging that will do little to curb youth smoking.
In fact, teens are so barraged by shills and hucksters already that they’ll probably see these reels for what they are: inauthentic nonsense. Some might even begin to think cigarettes are cool precisely because they are counterculture. Let’s hope I’m wrong.
Fact sheet
Perhaps the most egregious part of all is that the only welcome themes in these WHO videos must centre around what is being called a “Fact Sheet.” Now, these are not facts in the way that you and I might understand them. These facts are more like the “alternative facts” made famous by Kellyanne Conway in 2017.
Here is fact number #1 from the Fact Sheet.
You’ll notice that the “Fact” doesn’t even tackle the “Claim.” It’s a tactic admission that they know the real answer.
Have a look at the fact sheet for yourself. It’s full of the usual nonsense.
Final thoughts
The WHO wants to astroturf a global youth anti-tobacco movement. That desperation has spilt over into offering cash for videos spreading pre-determined talking points.
Smoking is such an irrelevance in most young people’s lives that they’re probably totally confused by organisations like the WHO claiming they’re being blasted by tobacco advertising wherever they turn.
Let’s get it straight. Gen Z is the most ad-blind or ad-resistant generation. That’s why brands use influencer marketing. It’s a way to tap into a level of authenticity and good feeling and cut through the noise.
The WHO’s suggestion that young people are even seeing tobacco or nicotine ads is wild; the implication they’re influenced by them is even wilder. The WHO rhetoric runs counter to everything that brands know about modern advertising. And we know they know this because they’re trying to force “authentic” content precisely because traditional methods don’t reach that demographic.
Ultimately, this is about the WHO spending its lavish marketing budget and ripping off a few content creators into the bargain.
