Get ready for Stoptober!

As with previous Stoptober campaigns, this year’s campaign is founded on the evidence that if a smoker can quit for 28 days, they are five times more likely to quit for good.

This year’s Stoptober will look and feel quite different to previous campaigns. Firstly, it will carry the new ‘Better Health’ branding which has been created to support a national health reset moment that launched at the end of July with a focus on obesity. This new branding approach responds to new challenges brought about by the COVID-19 pandemic and the impact it’s had on people’s health behaviours. Secondly, this year we will focus on two distinct audiences who we know from our research have different views and motivations toward making a quit attempt: a primary audience of smokers aged 35 to 60 and a secondary audience of younger smokers aged 18 to 34 (both focusing on C2DE socio-economic groups).

The campaign will comprise two key phases of activity: a ‘rally’ phase which will take place towards the end of September and aims to encourage and prepare smokers to make a quit attempt on 1st October, followed by a ‘support’ phase designed to help them sustain their quit attempt throughout the month.

A digital toolkit of campaign resources is being developed to help you support the campaign at a local level and will be available prior to launch (date TBC). We will be in touch again soon once it is available from our Campaign Resource Centre.

So whether you’re a local stop smoking service provider, GP practice, community pharmacy, Local Authority, NHS Trust or commercial organisation, we hope you will be able join our efforts to support smokers to make a quit attempt this Stoptober!