Yes campaign on tobacco advertising ban originates from Feinheit
Like the successful campaign for the care initiative, Feinheit designed the popular initiative "Children without Tobacco", which was adopted on Sunday. In addition, the agency was involved in the basic concept of the equally successful No campaign on stamp duty.
The majority of smokers start using tobacco as minors. Numerous studies show that tobacco advertising contributes massively to the initiation of smoking among children and adolescents. This is why a broad alliance consisting of the entire medical profession, major health organizations such as the Cancer League and Lung League, sports and youth associations, and numerous other organizations launched the "Children without Tobacco" initiative. The goal: to ban tobacco advertising wherever it reaches children and young people.
Visual moves problem to the center
The basic concept of the campaign quickly showed that the initiative had the better arguments on its side. Feinheit was therefore faced with the challenge of giving these arguments sufficient visibility against a million-dollar campaign co-financed by the tobacco lobby.
In the main visual, for example, Feinheit focused on the core emotional problem: too many children and young people in Switzerland smoke occasionally or even regularly - namely around a quarter of 17-year-olds and around 15 percent of 15-year-olds.
With commitment against a campaign of millions
The great strength of the Yes campaign was the commitment of the sponsors and the numerous supporters from all political camps, the health sector and sports. An important goal of the campaign was therefore to enable this commitment and make it visible.
Led by a broad-based national committee with representatives from politics and society, almost 20 cantonal committees did a lot of educational work and distributed hundreds of thousands of flyers.
On the Campaign website well over 1,000 individual messages were created and distributed in person as well as via the campaign's social media channels on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram. In addition, thousands of pharmacies, drugstores, doctors' offices and business outlets were supplied with campaign material.
The challenge of a majority of the cantons
Right from the start, it was clear that the initiative could reach the critical point where, despite a popular vote, it was in danger of failing by a narrow margin. Accordingly, Feinheit focused on the hurdle of the majority of the cantons right from the start: from analysis, through the use of resources and media planning, to online marketing.
Successful referendum on tax policy
Feinheit also contributed to the No vote in the stamp tax referendum - albeit a significantly smaller part. In June 2021, the agency was commissioned by the Swiss Social Democratic Party to develop the visuals and content for the referendum phase.
The concept was deliberately based on the successful tax policy referenda of recent years (USR III, child deductions). On the one hand, to create a substantive link between these proposals, in which a wealthy minority would always have been favored at the expense of the general public. On the other hand, to break down the complex matter of stamp duty in an understandable way. Both efforts succeeded, as the successful collection of signatures and the 62.7 percent "no" vote show.
