If you're planning a visit to Kampong Glam, a shisha hot spot in Singapore's central region, don't be surprised if you receive an anti-smoking multimedia message on your phone.
From last month, people who come within a kilometre of the area, which has about 40 shisha cafes, will receive an 18-second video on their mobile phone, where a hip-looking man spells out the risk of shisha smoking.
Singapore's Health Promotion Board (HPB), which launched the programme with the city state's biggest mobile phone service provider, SingTel, is among a number of anti-tobacco groups to parlay the rise in phone connectivity and social media use into hard-hitting anti-smoking campaigns.
Such groups say they must counter the influence of tobacco companies, who are aggressively promoting their brands online due to the advertising restrictions and bans in developed countries.
Douglas Bettcher, director of Tobacco Free Initiative of the World Health Organisation, says the bans have made the tobacco industry 'more desperate'. Digital marking provides an ideal platform, as it's tough to police, reaches out to a wide audience, and costs little or nothing to use. Facebook, for example, has 845 million users globally - and tobacco companies are quick to take advantage of this and other social media outlets.
British American Tobacco has 1,400 employees on Facebook, says Becky Freeman, research officer with the University of Sydney's School of Public Health. These employees join groups and post comments and images of hip youngsters smoking in pubs.