Teen smoking has gone down in the past few years…I doubt you’d find any study that would support your assertion
**
Ummm you do know that the tobacco companies did not make the “truth” ads, right?
Well, I know that there were some anti-smoking commercials made by tobacco companies. Probably that’s what I was thinking of. But the reason I thought the Truth commercials were was that no genuine anti-smoking group would make commercials so damn irritating.
Airdisc, a couple points:
- If you’re not a teenager, you’re not the target demographic.
- Are the collect-call ads designed by anti-collect-call companies? Because I have trouble imagining ads more annoying than collect-call ads.
A year or two ago, I heard an NPR report about how tobacco companies were trying to shut down the Truth campaign, because they said it violated the terms of the tobacco settlement. According to them, the settlement forbade funding any educational campaign that vilified tobacco companies or tobacco executives, and the Truth campaign obviously vilifies them.
It requires a pretty big conspiracy theory to claim that the tobacco companies are delighted by this apparently effective ad campaign that they’ve threatened legal action against and that portrays them as utter villains.
Daniel
Well, I am technically a teenager, and was the target audience when these ads started. They still annoyed the fuck out of me, and like others, I was this close to starting, just to be contrary. I didn’t because I couldn’t afford an addiction…
Does anybody else think it would be immensely satisfying to take a long drag off of a cigar and then blow it slowly, and directly, into that rat’s face?
I remember awhiles back they used to have ads where they would actually harass the workers of the Tobacco company. I deeply pitied the man who came in through the doors and was told “Hey, tobacco contains some components that are also in dog urine, would you like a big jar of dog urine?”
My pet theory is that it has more to do with a general knowledge that smoking is bad, not Truth*'s annoying commercials. I doubt there is a way to accurately measure where children learn of smoking’s problems, thus i can’t prove anything :(, but i’d wager dollars to donuts they all knew before they saw a dying rat on their TV. If Truth* wants to self-delude itself into thinking they are telling people something new, more power to them, but they are living a lie (ironic for a group called Truth*, eh?)
Again, they’re not telling anyone anything new: they’re selling an image. The image is this:
-Smokers=dumbass corporate tools
-Antismokers=cool hip edgy xtreme pranking asskickers
Whether they’re generally effective at selling this image is, I think, the best measure of their efficacy that we’re likely to get.
Daniel
Now, just out of curiosity, didn’t George Burns smoke about 8 cigars a day before he died around the age of 98.
EVERYTHING out there can kill you. Some friends told me at a barbecue that it was recently reported that fried foods can cause cancer. So, no more potato chips because they’ll kill ya. Eating anything, drinking anything, driving, even fucking breathing the air can fill your body with so many fucking pollutants that somewhere down the line you could possibly maybe kinda sorta get something bad. So, I guess we should all live in bubbles then, eh?
I don’t smoke. I occassionaly have a cigar or pretend to smoke for the fuck of it, but it doesn’t bother me. And everyone I know understands the consequences of smoking. Why do people smoke? Eh, they just do. They know it can lead to serious problems down the line, but they choose to do it anyway, because they enjoy it and they don’t bother to live their entire lives in fear of every little thing out there that could possibly kill you. These ads are intrusive, abusive, and just plain dumb. I admit, one of their first ones with the bodybags pilled up outside the tobacco company was kinda neat, just because I could imagine being there and seeing this great big pile of bodybags. The image was stunning, but the message was dull. Everything else they’ve done is shit, and I agree that if any of them tried pulling that shit on a one to one basis with a smoker out in public, they’d get their asses beat, and well deservingly so.
The “knowledge” that smoking is “bad” has been around for decades…teen smoking (self reported…that is) was still at 36.4% five years ago (see here …it’s now down around 28%. Whether that is attributable to advertising (by either the government or “truth”) or other factors like cig price increase, is up for debate…but the pre-existing “knowledge” didn’t really make a dent in the trend for awhile.
**
Well of course teens (warning, big generalization here) are a cohort of individuals who tend not to be concerned about their own mortality. They may “know” that certain behaviors are “bad”, but still engage in them…more so, it seems, then when they get older. The question becomes, if society wants to change that (and of course some folks think that government/society should not be in the business of doing that), how do you convey a message to this kind of consumer? I suspect that the Phillip Morris/Nancy Reagan “just say no” method doesn’t work that well.
**
I think “truth” is trying (as Daniel suggested) to portray the tobacco industry as some kind of “uncool” industry run by corrupt old white businessmen trying to manipulate new smokers. There is a fair amount of hyperbole in their efforts, but at least some grain of truth also. That tactic is a realtively new one, in terms of advertising. Can you think of any other advertising campaign previous to this that took the same approach? So in that regard, they are trying something “new”.
Again…whether they are being ethical in their approach is a different debate.
I was just over at thetruth.com looking around their website.
Hey, what’s this? It’s a section on how to get involved in truth*. Let’s see what it has to say!
The three step plan includes putting stickers on things and then putting that down on your college app.
Yeah.
Colleges don’t care about grades or the SATs anymore. Shit, why even go to school. Just spend 18 years working on truth* stuff and you’ll be sure to get into a good college, they’ll probably give you a scholarship! They may even PAY YOU to go!
I’d like to disect the entire website and see how many falsehoods are on there. goddamn ignorant assholes
I was just over at thetruth.com looking around their website.
Hey, what’s this? It’s a section on how to get involved in truth*. Let’s see what it has to say!
Yeah.
Colleges don’t care about grades or the SATs anymore. Shit, why even go to school. Just spend 18 years working on truth* stuff and you’ll be sure to get into a good college, they’ll probably give you a scholarship! They may even PAY YOU to go!
I’d like to disect the entire website and see how many falsehoods are on there. but, I’m not that good…
goddamn ignorant assholes
Shit, is it just me or is impower really spelled empower …
Hmm. Don’t know about most colleges, but I got into Virginia Tech with a GPA 3.76, SATs 1480, and 1 extracurricular activity. Which was also my 1 job. On the other hand, my friend with community service (ptui), SCA, and a SAT in the 1200 got in early admission.
Oh, yeah, the OP.
Really, people – is there anyone out there who didn’t know tobacco was bad for you? Why the smeg couldn’t the tobacco companies have said all along, “Yeah, we’re selling something that will kill you. So is McDonalds. So is Ford. You don’t like it, don’t buy it. Now, bugger off.”
—Lizard, www.mrlizard.com
I think you guys are way out of line here. The Truth ads are in fact well thought out and right on target.
My kids were watching TV and a Truth ad came on. It showed a couple of guys in a pickup truck out in the middle of nowhere in some third world pus hole, dismantleing a Marlboro billboard. The narrator tells us that they’re taking it down while the President of the United States is in town. Then they show the two guys erecting the billboard after Limo 1 whizzes by. Twice they show full frontal Marlboro advertising on Nicklefuckinlodeon. You can’t do that within a mile of a fucking school yard, but go right ahead and place a thirty second Marlboro spot smack dab in the middle of Sponge Bob, and tell us your looking out for my kid’s best interests.
So I guess it comes down to how you define “crappy” advertising. I think the piss drinking turd licking sister fuckers at Phillip Morris really are on to something. They beat the system and they’re doing it right under the States’ Attorneys General’s noses.
I will bet anything that this ad recruits more smokers than it deters. And that’s good fucking business. I wouldn’t be surprised if the nanococks at Phillip Morris figured out a way of writing the expense of the ads off of their taxes.
And fuck Nickelodeon and The Cartoon Channel for taking money indirectly from the tobacco companies and airing this subliminal fucking propaganda.
I hate smoking, and I’d love to personally kick the asses of all the tobacco executives for being the lying, soulless, criminal drug-pushing pieces of shit they are…
But I hate those ads. Nobody likes to be preached at by undergrads.
my question here is how many asses does ONE of them sumbitches have?
purely for future reference dontcha know.
truth™ does have its enemies. Believe it or not, one of them is one of the companies that gives them some of the money in the first place.
Letter from the Lorillard Tobacco Corporation
E72521 seems to believe the tobacco companies furnish these ads themselves. They don’t. Well, they do in a way, but they’re done by the ad agency working for ALF, not Philip Morris.
Philip Morris does have their own anti-smoking campaign, but it doesn’t mention their famous products by name-even though for some reason, they have to put a Surgeon General’s warning on them.
Wow. According to ALF, the American Journal of Public Health found out that whereas the truth™* campaign makes children want to smoke less, Philip Morris’ “Think. Don’t Smoke” campaign makes children want to smoke more.
Ironically, both ALF and Philip Morris bought ad time during the Super Bowl this year.
[sub]*The name of the campaign, truth™, is uncapitalized[/sub]
Yes, but ALF and his 10-10 ads are…what? Different ALF? nevermind…