This study sought to find out effectiveness of communication strategies of the “tobacco
kills –quit now” campaign in Nairobi County. The study reviews literature based on the
effectiveness of communication strategies of the “tobacco kills quit now” campaign
which include smoking, Effectiveness of antismoking campaigns, advertising creative
strategies of antismoking campaigns, strategic communication and other interventions for
social change in Kenya. The study employed both qualitative and quantitative methods.
Data collection was undertaken through the following process: Training of research
teams and pre-testing of tools: During this training, pre- testing of tools was undertaken
as part of the research teams’ orientation to the study objectives. 100 questionnaires were
administered and a response rate of 72% was recorded. The collected questionnaires were
sorted, cleaned, and coded. Once coded, the questionnaires were keyed into the Statistical
Package for Social Sciences for analysis. Descriptive statistics was used to analyse the
data and findings were presented in frequency tables, pie charts and bar charts for easy
understanding. Qualitative data from the focus group discussions was summarized using
thematic framework and analyzed using NVIVO 10 software. Dominant themes were
identified through content analysis where systematic sorting of data was done according
to the research objectives. The study established that the anti-smoking campaign by the
ministry of health was not grounded on any specific theories of behaviour change. This is
despite the fact that grounding a campaign in one or more theories of behaviour change
enables campaign planners to explain why and how a campaign should work, thus
assessing the campaign’s progress throughout the health communication process. The
anti-smoking campaign was however greatly influenced by global best practices and
previous researches such as Global Youth Tobacco Survey and Global Adult Tobacco
Survey when developing mass media communication strategies. Anti-smoking messaging
was only moderately effective in addressing target audience. Target population of the
ministry of health was the general household and not specific demographics. In Nairobi,
only 40.9% of the smokers quit smoking following anti-smoking messaging on cigarette
packets while only 34.9% of the smokers quit smoking following anti-smoking
messaging on TV/Radio. The use of English and Swahili only in composing the antismoking
message failed to address the population that is only conversant with their
vernacular languages. Further, the messaging was appropriate to some extent because the
ministry borrowed greatly from global trends and best practices. TV, Radio, Internet and
Newspaper are the most accessible channels of communication in Nairobi County. This
implies that the tobacco control unit of the ministry of health should not only rely on TV,
Radio and Cigarette packet messaging to relay the anti-smoking messages. They should
consider other channels of communication like the internet and newspapers. Many people
buy cigarettes in single sticks, which imply that they do not manage to read the warnings
on the packets. Anti-smoking campaign by the tobacco control unit of the ministry of
health was effective in causing behavior change among the target audience only to a
moderate extent. This is evidenced by the fact that only 40.9% of the smokers quit
smoking following anti-smoking messaging on cigarette packets while only 34.9% of the
smokers quit smoking following anti-smoking messaging on TV/Radio. However,
majority of the people in Nairobi County are aware of the dangers of smoking and second
hand smoking.