The results of WHO China’s social media video competition are in, and the winner is … smoke-free living!
Over three months in late 2014, the WHO China Office ran a competition among university students to produce tobacco control videos, for dissemination via social media. Undergraduate students from Peking University in China and Duke University in the USA joined the competition.
The students were invited to make a 1-minute video with the theme of ‘Smoke-free: a fashionable way to live your life’. All 28 entries received during the competition were disseminated via WHO China’s Weibo and Youku platforms, with the winners were determined by the most number of ‘likes’ received.
The winning entry was a group of students from Peking University, who produced an animated video entitled ‘Smoke-free, Barrier-free’. This video received more than 20,000 ‘likes’ on Weibo and Youku during the competition, and has been viewed on social media almost 50,000 times to date.
“The message we were trying to deliver was that, the more you smoke, the more people will stay away from you – so if you are smoke-free, you are also barrier free,” said Zhang Hao, a member of the winning team.
“Young people are the leaders of tomorrow, and their attitude determines what the world will look like in the future. With the effort of young people, a healthy and smoke-free China will never be a dream,” Zhang said.
The WHO competition aimed to engage young people to help increase awareness of the harms of tobacco, empower them to say no to smoking and second-hand smoke, as well as provide a platform for policy-makers and national leaders to hear the views of young people on tobacco control.
“Young people are the biggest users of social media in China – and also one of the groups most vulnerable to tobacco use,” said Dr Bernhard Schwartländer, WHO Representative in China.
“It is our job at WHO to educate and inform young people about the harms of tobacco and the benefits of being smoke-free. What better way to do that than invite young people themselves to help us tell this story through social media?,” Dr Schwartländer continued.
“The videos we received are interesting, creative and inspiring. They’ve given us lots of new ideas about how to promote smoke-free to young people – about what kind of messages on tobacco control resonate with this group. It’s been a very valuable exercise,” said Dr Schwartländer.
China is the world’s largest producer and consumer of tobacco products. There are more than 300 million smokers in the country – with 28.1% of adults, and more than half of all adult men, regular smokers. More than 1 million people die from tobacco-related illness every year. In addition, over 700 million people are routinely exposed to second-hand smoke, which kills approximately 100,000 people every year.