Soul City: Multi-Media Anti-Smoking Strategy

The Soul City series aired respectively in 1994, 1996, 1997 and 1999. Five key elements of media were used in an anti-tobacco campaign. Soul City, a 13 episode 1/2 hour television drama was aired at prime time (8pm) on SABC1. The radio drama of the second series called Healing Hearts consisted of 45 15-minute episodes broadcast on 8 different language stations and a further 10 community radio stations. Printed media was used to support the broad messages delivered by TV and radio with more detailed information. Three 34-page glossy booklets were developed each series and illustrated with characters from the television series. The booklets were serialised in 2 languages in 10 newspapers nationally and thereafter a total of 2.2 million booklets were distributed as inserts in these newspapers.

Tobacco, Children, Youth, Health.

The Soul City multi media package delivers the following messages: "Smoking is not cool; resist peer pressure; it is illegal to sell tobacco to children under the age of 16; second-hand smoke is dangerous; giving up smoking is possible and healthy; smokers need support from their friends and families to quit". Story lines in the series featured a smoker trying to quit, community initiatives to stop shopkeepers from selling tobacco to children, and youngsters trying to pressure their friends to try smoking. Soul City uses PR and advertising to advocate for the anti-tobacco campaign and also to popularise the television and radio programmes. Soul City has also developed education packages for use in formal and informal education settings. The education packages are geared towards adults and youth between the ages of 11 and 16. This teaching tool is based on the issues brought up by the stories from their television and radio programmes. The education package consists of a comic with information pages, posters, workbooks, a facilitator's guide and audio tapes. Soul City used humour to address the smoking issue which was an effective way to capture the attention of the audience. Soul City is an on-going strategy which makes it unique. People have become familiar with the series and its characters so that any new series captures a large and faithful audience from the first episode.