"Every Cigarette is Doing You Damage" was the tagline for an Australian advertising campaign funded by Quit (an anti-cancer organisation) along with various government departments. The main thrust of the campaign was five television advertisements that featured the damage that was done by smoking. These were backed up with billboards, adverts in bus/tram stops, train stations and magazines. The campaign was invented by advertising agency Brown Melhuish Fishlock, and won five stars (which is the highest award) at the Advertising Federation of Australia's (AFA) 6th annual Advertising Effectiveness Awards. Since the advertisements' inception in 2000, the campaign has been exported to over thirty countries worldwide including the USA, Germany, the United Kingdom, New Zealand and Singapore.

The advertisements feature a relatively high shock value - starting off with a person enjoying a leisurely smoke somewhere, the camera dives down their throat using endoscopic technology, then some negative effects of smoking are shown. For example, lung tissue will be shown rotting, cancers forming on the esophagus, blood vessels bursting in the eye, and a sequence showing a large amout of yellow gunk being squeezed out of the aorta of a smoker - aged thirty-two. This is not the first time that unpleasant graphic imagery has been used in Australian advertising - the Transport Accident Commission has been broadcasting sickening accident awareness advertisements for a number of years.

Although it is hard to measure the success of an advertisement for a non-profit cause, the results seem positive. According to a media release by the AFA in August 2001:
  • Within its first six months, the incidence of smoking reduced by 190,000 smokers.
  • An estimated $24.2 million in health related costs were saved in the first 18 months of the campaign.
  • There are now an estimated 250,000 less smokers than before the campaign launch.


  • Sasha Gabba Hey! says The best reason I've seen to quit smoking was when I was visiting the spinal unit at a public hospital on regular occasion. It was full of men and women who had had their legs amputated from poor circulation due to smoking, yet even on the coldest nights they were still outside filling forty-four gallon drums with cigarette butts.

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