Current
slogan of a series of horrible television ads aimed at convincing
teenagers not to smoke. Well, at least not to start their
life long habit until they're 20 years old. The ads feature kids talking about how smoking is bad, and one in which they even
rap. The rap one is especially amusing because they decided to go with an
80s style of rapping, similar to a recent
McDonald's ad.
This ad campaign features several major problems that are similar to the ones that made DARE so ineffective. Teenagers are not complete idiots, and can become very critical once they realise that someone is not completely telling the truth. In DARE we were taught that all drugs are bad. They will all kill you, even marijuana. So, it's not surprising after Johnny Pothead smokes his first joint and doesn't jump off a building, that he no longer believes anything he's been told. In this case, teens are presented with an interesting argument. Tobacco is bad; in fact, so bad that only mentally unstable people would dare abuse it. Even stranger, this only applies to people in a certain age group. I can't imagine there is any teenager in America that has been won over with this logic.
Of course, things get even more interesting when you look at who put the commercial out. Lorillard, makers of Newport cigarettes, was forced to spend $500 million a year on anti-tobacco advertising. It seems that in this case, Lorillard has been court ordered to get around the no pro-tobacco advertising on television law. The only people who would possibly look on these ads positively are parents. Parents who are probably smokers already.