I know what’s under the Philip Morris umbrella but what are some of Reynolds brands? Other than the cigarettes, I can’t come up with anything. (I don’t smoke, but years of working gas station retail gets you learning your tobacco products.)
They didn’t used to call it RJR Nabisco for nothing…
For what it’s worth, my fourteen year old daughter referred to the batch of Truth.com ads they ran last year as the "*everybody dies from smoking and nobody ever dies from anything else * :rolleyes: " ads.
I didn’t know that. When did they stop calling it RJR Nabisco?
As I said earlier, I don’t smoke. Never had any desire to, and besides now I’ve got all the vices my budget can handle with DVDs, booze, and gambling. But those damn Truth ads piss me off as well. I’ve never been able to decide what’s the worst–those Truth ads, the old 80s “brain-frying pan” bizarreness, or the ones that came out after 9/11 saying that buying marijiuana financed terrorists.
I like the one where the teenaged boy spots this hot girl at a party. He proceeds to walk towards her but then she lights up a smoke. So then the kid does a 180 and walks away like he’s not intrested anymore.
GIVE ME A FREAK’N BREAK. NO TEENAGE BOY IS GONNA TURN A GIRL DOWN BECAUSE OF THAT!!
I would have. I didn’t mind being friends with people who smoked but I really didn’t like the smell of tobacco and I wouldn’t have wanted to kiss someone who was a regular smoker. Even after high school smoking was something that eliminated a potential dating partner.
Marc
They’ve been running similar commercials for like 30 years. Why all the anger now?
As a matter of fact, I am currently not smoking every single cigarette in existence. I think we have some kind of orders-of-infinity problem here.
I would have. It’s an instant turn-off. I still can remember the ashtray taste of the brief kiss I once shared with a girl that was a smoker. Yuch!
Stranger
If she’s cute enough, she could be chewing on asbestos.
shrug Why not? I’ve still got a Pit thread about Richard Nixon waiting to happen.
'Cause “The Truth” hurts? 
The Truth? :dubious: You can’t handle The Truth!
Daniel
I would have. I probably still would.
Enjoy,
Steven
Nope. Not for me. Cute only goes so far, and only lasts so long.
Stranger
The teenage boys of the world would beg to differ. Hence testifying to the further suckitude of those ads.
As a teenage lad once, I bet to differ with the blanket statement in contention. I would not have dated a girl that smokes, no matter how “hot” she was. Period.
With respect to the ads, though I haven’t seen the most recent batch, I’ve no doubt that they are ineffective at best and counterproductive at worst, at least based upon empircal experience. Personally, I think the more effective method would be to have kids meet chronic emphysema sufferers and see an autopsied smokers lung; the sight of a putrescent, tar-filled chronic smoker’s lung is enough to put Francis Bacon off of his lunch.
Stranger
I remember an ad when I was young with a late-middle-aged woman, smoking through her trachiatomy hole that really, really made an impression. Of course, allow me to nullify that by saying I smoke now. But at the time, this was a very powerful image, one that all my friends and any one my age I think remembers.
I remember when the ads first came out I read something about their strategy. Apparently, market research showed that ads depicting the health consequences of smoking weren’t effective: teenagers have a very difficult time imagining themselves as forty-year-olds, and all the health consequences of smoking that were depicted were shown in middle-aged folks with whom they couldn’t identify. If they did identify with them, they’d just think, “Heck, I’ve got thirty years to quit!”
So the Truth ads are based on this market research, and target things that are important to teenagers. Teenagers don’t want to be controlled by adults; they don’t want to be someone else’s pawn; they don’t want to be social outcasts. The ads target what seems real and immediate to a broad cross-section of teenagers, not what a lot of adults believe ought to be real and immediate to them.
The fact that y’all hate the ads isn’t really empirical evidence: the ads aren’t intended to appeal to you, any more than ads for Chocolate Frosted Sugar Bombs are intended to appeal to you.
Daniel