Public Affairs Case Study: Worth The Change

Situation

South Carolina has the lowest cigarette tax in the nation. At just 7 cents per pack, the state is dramatically below the national average of 92 cents per pack. For several years, health advocates in South Carolina have promoted significantly increasing the tax because such measures have proven in every other state to decrease youth smoking rates and save billions of dollars in healthcare costs. Davis Public Relations and Marketing was hired by the Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids to coordinate the 2006 cigarette tax campaign for the South Carolina Tobacco Collaborative.

Strategy

The South Carolina Cigarette Tax Strategy Team consisted of individuals from six major national health organizations plus two registered lobbyists. Knowing that the issue faced a significant uphill battle in an election year, we focused our efforts on a full-scale public affairs campaign that would garner media and community support for the issue while securing support from elected officials through grassroots and direct lobbying.

Tactics

The team visited the editorial boards of nearly all of South Carolina’s major daily newspapers, resulting in positive editorials about the cigarette tax increase from every newspaper visited, including a reversal of opinion on the issue from a newspaper which had previously written against the measure. We coordinated a letter-writing campaign to keep the issue in the news across the state, placing numerous letters to the editor throughout the six-month legislative session from advocates of each coalition member group. We worked with prominent physicians and politicians, including the former president of the American Medical Association and a Republican gubernatorial candidate, to place op-ed pieces in major daily newspapers throughout South Carolina. We wrote and issued news releases as the issue progressed through the legislative process, resulting in extensive print coverage and numerous television interviews. The campaign also utilized paid media strategies such as radio ads, print ads and direct mail. The grassroots campaign included regular advocacy alerts to thousands of supporters, the establishment of a toll-free number to patch callers to their legislators and a website designed to capture the names of supporters and keep them up to date on the progress of the bills. The campaign employed a variety of tactics to reach legislators such as receptions, lobby day events, luncheons and weekly briefing papers to all members of the legislature addressing a different aspect of the issue, from health to economic reasons.

Results

We made history by getting two freestanding cigarette tax bills out of sub-committee for the first time. Although the difficult legislative climate in South Carolina prevented passage of the cigarette tax increase this year – we came within just 8 votes of passing the tax increase on a floor amendment – we believe that we accomplished our goal of significant media and public support of the issue. Overwhelming support from statewide media, particularly in the form of positive articles and editorials throughout the session, kept the issue in the forefront, and many newspapers wrote scathing editorials scolding legislators at the end of the session when the tax did not pass.