Campaign Profiles
These are some of the campaigns we have studied. We'll be adding more profiles as our research progresses, so please visit often.
Want to have your campaign listed here? Please forward details of your campaign and your contact information.
|
1. Remove Alcopops from the market |
|
| Name of Campaign | Profile |
|---|---|
| 1. Remove Alcopops from the market | In 1997, the San Francisco-based beverage marketer McKenzie River Corporation introduced "alcopops", sweetened alcoholic drinks packaged and marketed to appeal to young people, in five cities around the country. Within days, a wide cross-section of community-based groups and national advocacy groups demanded that the company pull the products from the shelves of the pilot cites — a demand the company met in less than a week. Despite this initial success, since 2001, alcopops constitute a growing share of the market. The Center for Science in the Public Interest's Alcohol Policies Project, one of several advocacy groups working for the eradication of alcopops, has summarized existing research, educated the public, conducted public opinion polling, and advocated for policy change to encourage the industry to stop the manufacture of alcopops. [top] |
| 2. Campaign for Alcohol Free Sports TV | The Campaign for Alcohol Free Sports TV is an ongoing national initiative to eliminate alcohol advertising from National Collegiate Athletic Association-sponsored sports events. Launched in 2003 by the Center for Science in the Public Interest, the campaign grows through collaborating with other alcohol abuse prevention advocates to convince college administrators, the NCAA, and the alcohol industry to end advertising at college sports events. A mix of media advocacy, research, and coalition building has made this campaign a sustainable force for change, and while they have not yet achieved their ultimate aim, dozens of universities have endorsed their goals and put pressure on the NCAA to reconsider current policies. [top] |
| 3. Require automakers to sell less polluting vehicles in California | In December 2004, advocates moved quickly to protect the auto emissions standards adopted by the California Air Resources Board after 13 California auto dealers and the Alliance of Automobile Manufacturers (AAM) filed a federal lawsuit which sought to block the regulations from taking effect. Ongoing advocacy activities such as counter-advertising, legal advocacy, and community mobilization by Bluewater Network, Union of Concerned Scientists, and National Resources Defense Council, among others, have helped shape the debate. Though the case is still pending, advocates have pressured AAM to pull a deceptive ad from the market and mobilized more than 100,000 people to write letters urging AAM to drop the lawsuit. [top] |
| 4. Get Coca Cola out of Seattle schools | For more than five years, Citizens' Campaign for Commercial-Free Schools led advocates in an effort to remove Coca-Cola from Seattle public schools. Activists argued that it was inappropriate to promote and sell high sugar, low nutrient products in schools. Activities included community organizing, public education, running candidates for the school board, and media and policy advocacy. Ultimately, the campaign was successful; in September 2004, the Seattle School Board adopted a comprehensive nutrition policy, calling for the removal of Coke from Seattle schools within the year. [top] |
| 5. Stop Patient Channel from advertising drugs to hospitalized patients | General Electric's 1997 launch of the Patient Channel, a network that delivers medical programming and pharmaceutical ads to patients in hospitals across the country, prompted Commercial Alert to launch a national campaign to shut the network down. The group believed that in their vulnerable state hospital patients should not be subjected to drug ads. Letter-writing campaigns and public education led to several successes, including the Joint Commission on Accreditation of Healthcare Organization's modification of what constitutes "patient education" and pledges from several hospital chains to not run the programming. [top] |
| 6. National Campaign to Close the Newspaper Loophole on Gun Advertising | In November 2001, Iowans for the Prevention of Gun Violence launched the National Campaign to Close the Newspaper Loophole, a coalition that works to remove classified ads for firearms sold by unlicensed dealers from the nation's newspapers. The campaign's premise was that such advertising made illegal guns more accessible. As a result of this ongoing initiative's primary activity — writing letters to newspaper editors — by August 2005, 33 newspapers from across the country have changed their policies to prohibit the advertising of firearms from unlicensed dealers. [top] |
| 7. Million Mom March for stronger federal gun control laws | In 1999, the Million Mom March, a national campaign to persuade local, state and federal legislators to pass stronger gun control laws, brought several hundred thousand people to Washington DC to demand action. The March mobilized people around the country and educated the nation about gun violence but had difficulty in sustaining action over time or maintaining political pressure on elected officials. [top] |
| 8. Fight KOOL: Stop KOOL Cigarettes' Target Marketing | Fight KOOL was a seven-month national campaign launched by the National African American Tobacco Prevention Network. The campaign began in April 2003, and responded specifically to an increase in the target marketing efforts of Brown & Williamson tobacco company, makers of KOOL cigarettes, toward African American and Latino youth. The group argued such marketing could contribute to widening disparities in health. B & Ws marketing campaign, known as KOOL MIXX, was forced to shut down in October 2003 as a result of the grass roots advocacy efforts of Fight KOOL and the simultaneous litigation by several state Attorneys General based on the 1998 MSA agreement between 46 states and the five largest tobacco companies. [top] |
| 9. Lower price of Norvir | In December 2003, Abbot Laboratories announced a 400% increase in the cost of Norvir, an essential component of combination protease inhibitor therapies for HIV/AIDS. The company argued the decision was necessary to fund the development of new life-saving drugs. The Norvir Pricing Campaign, a coalition of AIDS treatment advocates, scientists, doctors and government officials, opposed the Abbot re-pricing of Norvir. They claimed that the increase would have a negative impact on AIDS patient care as well as the competitive market for the research and development of new HIV/AIDS therapies. In March, 2004, a petition by the nonprofit Essential Inventions to produce a generic, low-cost version of Norvir led the NIH to hold a hearing where both sides of this conflict presented their arguments. While the FDA ruled that it did not have the authority to intervene, a congressional investigation into the price increase is ongoing, with the potential for renewed campaign efforts. [top] |
| 10. Improve SUV Fuel Efficiency | For ten years, The Sierra Club has led a national campaign to force the US auto industry to improve the fuel efficiency and safety of its SUVs in order to reduce global warming. The campaign has included legislative advocacy for higher fuel efficiency standards, consumer education targeting Ford and other auto makers for their role in global warming, and, more recently, a partnership with Ford to promote a more fuel efficient SUV hybrid. While public attitudes towards SUVs have changed, the overall fuel efficiency of US vehicles has continued to decline. [top] |
| 11. Label or Ban Transfats | Since 1994, the Center for Science in the Public Interest and other advocacy organizations and scientists have worked to persuade the FDA to require labeling of the trans fat content of US foods or to ban it altogether. Trans fats contribute to heart disease and diabetes and are pervasive in processed and fast foods. The campaign has also settled lawsuits with two major US food companies, Kraft and McDonalds, for misleading consumers on the trans fats in their products. As of 2006, the FDA will require all food labels to include information on trans fats. [top] |
| 12. Stop Uptown Cigarettes | In 1990, a coalition led by African Americans in Philadelphia mobilized local and national organizations to force the R.J. Reynolds Company to withdraw a planned test marketing of Uptown cigarettes, designed to appeal to African-Americans. The campaign included church groups, local and national health leaders, elected officials and others. The Uptown cigarette campaign was uniquely successful in that it used primarily local grassroots strategies to stop the marketing of Uptown cigarettes before the cigarettes and accompanying promotional products could be distributed to retailers. [top] |
| 13. License to Kill | To focus public and media attention on Big Tobacco, License to Kill (L2K) registered as a tobacco company in Spring of 2003 with the mission of satirizing the industry's blatant efforts to sell its lethal products. Using street theater, media advocacy and other tactics, the group organizes events to mock the industry. Their motto, "We're rich, You're Dead!" is directed not only to the grassroots tobacco control activists who participate in their press releases, but specifically to "rival" giant Altria/Philip Morris. L2K targets Big Tobacco's global youth marketing and political influence in Washington, DC, and condemns them for their role in deaths known to be caused by cigarette consumption. By openly aspiring to profit off death, L2K seeks to undermine Big Tobacco's rhetoric, motives and profiteering. [top] |
| 14. Get Alcohol Ads Off the BART | In January 2007, the Bay Area Rapid Transit System voted to end all alcohol advertising on its trains, busses and shelters. The successful campaign was organized by The Marin Institute, an alcohol industry watchdog group, that has been advocating for the reduction of alcohol-related problems since 1987. The group uses grass-roots organizing, policy advocacy and media strategies to reduce environmental influences that encourage alcohol use. By pressuring San Francisco city transportation officials to sign on to, and enforce strict advertising contracts that limit where ads are placed, the campaign has led to a Bay Area public transportation system that disallows all alcohol advertising in buses and trains, as well as transit shelters in school zones free from alcohol advertising. Marin's BART campaign may serve as a model for other municipalities around the nation. [top] |
| 15. Freedom From Oil | Freedom From Oil (formerly JumpStart Ford) is a national, grassroots campaign and joint project of Rainforest Action Network, Global Exchange and the Ruckus Society. The campaign works to end the United State's dependence on oil and end global warming by demanding the auto industry reduce health-harming vehicle emissions and greenhouse gases by 2020. Freedom From Oil specifically targets the Ford Motor Company as the automaker has had the lowest fleet-wide fuel economy for the past 5 straight years, and for 20 of the last 30 years. Utilizing techniques ranging from media campaigns to direct action to partnering directly with auto dealers in their "Adopt A Dealer" program, Freedom From Oil has made significant progress. The campaign's decision to focus directly on the Ford Corporation rather than on regulatory change follows a trend among environmental and public health advocates. [top] |
| 16. Keep Antibiotics Working | Concerned with increasing antibiotic resistance that can result in infections that are difficult or even impossible to treat, the Keep Antibiotics Working campaign is committed to eliminating the use of antibiotics in meat. The campaign includes health, consumer, agricultural, environmental, humane and other advocacy groups which, collectively, urge corporations to stop using antibiotics in raising animals. Keep Antibiotics Working works focuses on the following three goals: 1) encouraging corporations to phase out the use of antibiotics that are important to human medicine in healthy animals; 2) encouraging corporations to restrict the use of antibiotics important to human medicine in sick animals, and 3) working to ensure that both policy makers and the public have access to necessary information to track the use and misuse of antibiotics in agriculture and about the development of antibiotic resistance. [top] |
| 17. The Prescription Project | The Prescription Project seeks to reduce conflicts of interests created by heavy drug marketing between the pharmaceutical industry and prescribing physicians. Currently, the pharmaceutical industry spends $7 billion dollars per year marketing to doctors, which includes free meals, gifts, funding for travel and lodging, continuing medical education, research funding, and other expenses. Another $18 billion per year is spent on samples for physicians and patients. The Prescription Project's research and advocacy works to ensure that doctors' prescribing practices are based on accurate and unbiased information. [top] |
| 18. Dump Soft Drinks | Operating in eight countries, the Global Dump Soft Drinks Campaign works to inform consumers about how soft drinks contribute to diet-related disease. The campaign, which recommends governments enforce strict regulations on soft drink companies, is a result of combined efforts by two leading public health advocacy groups, the Center for Science in the Public Interest and their global counterpart, the International Association of Consumer Food Organizations. [top] |
| 19. The Public Health Advocacy Institute (PHAI) | PHAI collaborators were at the forefront of legal battles that gave rise to the US's largest public health settlement, the Tobacco Master Settlement Agreement, and now PHAI calls upon those methods to combat other corporate practices that harm health. Based out of Boston, PHAI works to strengthen the range of legal arguments that advocates can use to take on Big Tobacco and other corporations whose products harm health. PHAI serves as a legal and policy research center with current projects that seek to forward tobacco control advocacy and reverse childhood obesity. [top] |
| 20. Strategic Alliance | The Strategic Alliance for Healthy Food and Activity Environments is an innovative organization that works to empower communities and residents to take action against rising obesity rates. The group emphasizes local approaches to improving food and activity environments, and their resources, training, and assessment tools are available to schools, businesses and municipal establishments. To ensure healthy food environments for children, Strategic Alliance equips caregivers, educators and administrators with the tools to take on the food and beverage industry. The Strategic Alliance Environmental Nutrition and Activity Community Tool (ENACT) database, an interactive networking tool and development guide; has been endorsed by the American Public Health Association and is available online. [top] |
