The first commercial cigarette was sold in 1865. By 1944 cigarette production was up to $300 billion a year. In 1964 the Surgeon General of the U.S. found out that cigarettes cause lung cancer and other related disease. Only a year later Congress passed the Cigarette Labeling and Advertising Act which enforced every commercial cigarette package to have a warning label informing the health risks from smoking cigarettes.
Even though everyone knows cigarettes are bad for you they still smoke, a lot. There are many companies selling products that promote people to quit smoking but when people start businesses they have one thing in mind, making money. So these quit-smoking products aren't always effective and say what they're going to do. Besides, smoking is something a person has to do on his/her own. Since products aren't very effective, the only thing left is encouragement. The State Tobacco Education and Prevention Partnership wanted to do just that. By hiring Cactus ad agency they created a campaign called "The Cigarette is Dead". By using a long coffin-like nail in the name, they began to advertise the message throughout the city by using sidewalk chalk, huge murals on buildings, print ads, online ads, and videos. By the simple slogan, “The cigarette is dead” and repetitively using the nail as the campaign logo, the campaign encourages people to stop smoking. Along with the message, they include the website, “quitdoingit.com” to provide further information to people.
I found this campaign to be effective on society. Personally, I used to smoke cigarettes, and still do from time to time. But whenever I saw “The Cigarette is Dead” ad, I became discouraged by what I was doing. For me, I didn’t want to think of what cigarettes were doing to my body. I’m sure that is true for a lot of smokers. But when seeing the same ads over and over, it made me question why I would do such harm to my body.
Here is a link to Cactus' site for the campaign. I'm sure you'll recognize a few...
http://www.sharpideas.com/#/9.0
Thanks Dan. This is indeed a great campaign and a nice example of design used for the greater good. Congrats on the quitting (almost).
ReplyDeleteGreat exmaple. I was not aware of this campaign. The truth campaign (www.thetruth.com) did an incredible job in a shocking sort of way to slap America across the face and actually show the effects of tobacco. I have never smoked but friends and loved ones have and it's absolutely disgusting. It seems as if there are still a lot of people still smoking and the government should spend more time and money helping people quit.
ReplyDeleteI love the fact that you brought this advertising campaign up because I have seen posters before and haven't really researched it or visited the website. I find non-smoking ads to be quite intrusive and judgmental quite honestly because the designs don't give enough information and I feel bombarded with quilt for being a smoker. I like the design but like I said, I still didn't visit the website for more information. I don't think more ads about how smoking kills is what smokers need to quit. I think we need to create more options for quitting, more available solutions and more affordable. I think "www.thetruth.com" ads are more effective because of the drama but again, telling people smoking is bad is a futile effort. Great subject for this post!
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