Background:
Mois sans tabac (MST) is a social marketing operation, inspired by the British Stoptober. Organized every November in France since 2016, it aims to encourage smokers to stop smoking for 30 days. Smokers are invited to register on a website. Between 2016 and 2019, annual registrations ranged from 158290 to 243579. Since 2020, these figures have been steadily decreasing (112933 in 2021). The COVID-19 pandemic is part of the explanation in 2021, but the loss of momentum of MST leads to rethink the device.

Objective:
Our aim was to re-create engagement for MST.

Methods:
Three brainstorming sessions were organized by Santé publique France with stakeholders: the project team, communication contractors, and experts involved in MST (tobacco cessation, social marketing, field actors; n=21). The objectives were to generate new ideas to help smokers to quit tobacco. Three focus groups of low socioeconomic status smokers were conducted (15 men and 11 women) with the same objectives but also to test the ideas from the previous brainstorming sessions. An external observer attended all sessions and analyzed the results.

Results:
All data concluded that MST should be maintained, as an annual event supported by public authorities. New ideas have been raised: expectations from a wider mobilization of public authorities and civil society, a strengthened support system to choose between different quitting tools, to humanize and individualize the support, the need to emphasize the collective approach and to reward smoking cessation. Differences according to the profiles of participants were observed.

Conclusions:
Ideas were discussed within the project team and led to a redefinition around four axes in 2022: the reaffirmation of the collective ambition of MST, the pedagogy of the device and the quitting tools, the possibility to have a tailor-made cessation program, and the creation of a mobilizing event to reaffirm the momentum of MST.