Mayor Howorth speaks at the Breathe Free MB campaign kickoff event

We wanted to be sure you saw KNBC-TV’s report on Breathe Free MB, the public education campaign we’ve put together for Manhattan Beach to explain the city’s new Smoke-Free Public Places ordinance.

In this report, you can see some of the signage we’ve developed with our graphics partner, Robin Weisz, to educate the public about the sweeping smoking law that went into effect July 18. The City has delayed enforcement until Aug. 18 to give the public time to become knowledgeable about the new law.

To ensure the public is informed, the City engaged us to create a public education campaign. We created the campaign identity, strategy and various tools for communicating with the public on an ongoing basis because Manhattan Beach attracts so many tourists and visitors from throughout Southern California who would have no reason to pay attention to the City’s smoking ordinance prior to their visit to Manhattan Beach.

So we created a kickoff campaign starting today that will educate residents, local employees and others currently in the City. We also created signage and other communications tools that will continue to be visible in the City to ensure we reach newcomers to the community with the message that smoking is not permitted in public places. The goal of the education campaign is to make the ordinance self-enforcing so that the City’s valuable law enforcement resources can continue to focus on other priorities.