After it has became widely known that
cigarettes are not healthy and, in fact, quite bad for your health,
cigarette ads have to sell the product by appealing to irrational impulses alone: The have to somehow convince people that their lives will improve if they smoke, without giving any rational reason (since there is none). We all know the result: cigarette ads show beautiful and
classy (or
rugged and cool) people engaging in fashionable activities while smoking. Apparently,
people are stupid enough to let this convinve them that smoking will somehow make them equally classy or cool.
Now what about Japan? Well, it's even more ridiculous there: cigarette ads in Japan just show the beautiful people and leave out the cigarettes alltogether, except for an image of a pack next to the main image. In a way, it's just logical. Or maybe it's because of a law that prohibits ads from showing people actually smoking. I don't know; anyway, I can only look with pity at people who let themselves be persuaded by such ads into paying money for something to poison themselves with...