"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.