For a decade or more No Smoking Day has resembled a game of pass the parcel.
It's not that long ago (15 years?) that NSD had its own office, a budget of £600,000 a year, and four members of staff.
Since 2011 however the responsibility for NSD has been passed around like a luke warm potato.
For several years the British Heart Foundation took it on, rather half-heartedly I thought.
Two years ago (from memory) the BHF gave up on NSD and in the absence of a new national coordinator it appeared to exist in name only, relying on the usual suspects plus a few local councils and NHS trusts to keep the flame alive.
Today the No Smoking Day URL (no smoking day.org.uk) still points to a rather forlorn page on the BHF website that doesn’t even mention the event.
Instead social media posts about NSD now direct visitors to a campaign website called Today Is The Day that was originally designed by an agency in Leeds, I think, for a local anti-smoking campaign.
Two years ago the Today Is The Day URL was commandeered for NSD along with the 'Today Is The Day' slogan and branding.
It’s a cheaper option than creating a new NSD brand and style guide, but self-defeating I think.
By adopting ‘Today Is The Day’ (which is at best a very generic slogan) for No Smoking Day, the NSD brand has been compromised and diluted to the point where it is almost invisible.
This year, in another round of pass the parcel, ASH seems to have taken charge of NSD (in England at least), presumably because no-one else wanted to do it.
I first noticed their involvement in February when a No Smoking Day Communications Toolkit appeared on their website.
The 2021 toolkit persisted with the ‘Today Is The Day’ theme which suggests a lack of imagination because as well as two previous No Smoking Days (2019 and 2020) it was also used for the ill-fated and piss poor Quit for Covid campaign.
(Seriously, how many times can you recycle the same slogan and campaign tools before people switch off and stop noticing?)
Helpfully the toolkit included ‘suggested’ tweets and Facebook posts. (I must check how many times they were posted and by whom. It shouldn’t be difficult to find out.)
The toolkit also came with this acknowledgement:
This work has been developed collaboratively between ASH and Breathe 2025 with support from PHE Marketing, GM Health and Social Care Partnership and Fresh Smokefree North East.
On Tuesday, on the eve of NSD, ASH also issued a press release: Smokers who stop happier in long term, No Smoking Day 2021.
Forest responded with this - Claim that smokers are happier if they quit “laughably simplistic” says Forest – but it was a waste of time because ASH's press release was completely ignored by the national media, as was our response.
There were a handful of reports about No Smoking Day in the regional press but NSD seems to be operating according to the law on diminishing returns.
As an aside, the most stupid No Smoking Day-related article appeared in the London Evening Standard: 11 things to spend your money on that are better than cigarettes.
It began with these two statements, both of them wrong:
In his recent Budget announcement Chancellor Rishi Sunak increased so-called ‘sin’ taxes including duties on tobacco.’
What’s more smoking heightens your chances of catching Covid.
An article well suited then to the dreary waste of space No Smoking Day has become.
The good news, I suppose, is that NSD clearly has no budget to speak of.
If I was in government though I would question whether tobacco control should be given any public money to fund quit smoking events because with these dullards in charge I can’t imagine it being money well spent.
Perhaps Forest should offer to organise No Smoking Day. At least we’d bring some fun into it.
Update: What are the UK’s Most Popular Quit Smoking Campaigns? No Smoking Day doesn’t get a mention.