Dammit, this is so true.
Agency: Miles Calcraft Briginshaw Duffy, London
Creatives: Paul Briginshaw & Malcolm Duffy (Creative Director)
Dave Hobbs (Art Director)
Richard Stoney (Copywriter)
Russell Taylor (Agency Producer)
Director :Chris Palmer
Production Company: Gorgeous
Adland® is a commercial-laden heaven and hell for advertising addicts around the world.
This advertising publication was founded in 1996, built on beer and bravery, Adland® now boasts the largest super bowl commercials collection in the world.
Adland® survives on your donations alone. You can help us out by buying us a Ko-Fi. Adland® works best in Brave browser
This is a powerful ad.
My anti-smoking rant - skip if you can't handle the truth [Jack Nicholson, A Few Good Men]:
..................................................................................................................................................
I've lost my mother and father, and almost my kid brother to smoking related disease. (Empyhsema, Lung Cancer, and Giant Bullous disease, respectively). I've also lost a few aunts, uncles, and friends to smoking related disease. I don't smoke, and I have allergies, asthma (which I only got 5 years ago), and chronic sinusitis - just from living most of my life with smokers. Fortunately, most of the places I live and work at have anti-smoking rules, restricting smokers to doing it outdoors. Having seen what these diseases can do, first-hand, I can tell you that these are NOT easy deaths - you essentially drown or choke to death very, very, very slowly, with little relief, even from morphine (although enough will cause your lung function to decrease even more, causing more decreases from the disease, until your lungs stop being able to do anything, then you die, trying for that last, painful, and unfortunately too shallow breath).
..................................................................................................................................................
One friend used to say, "I could get killed just as easily crossing the street!" (Congestive heart failure, combined with lung cancer onset killed him at 48 y.o.). I pointed out that you can get killed all sorts of ways, but if you insist on standing in front of the on-coming train, you're most likely to die from it!
..................................................................................................................................................
I know it is a bitch and a half to quit [note that a bitch and a half usually trumps dabitch ;-)], but enough fear often helps - my dad quit, when he entered the hospital for his surgery [last 10 weeks of his life there], my mom quit when they brought the Oxygen tanks into the house (afraid of blowing up the house - I didn't bother to correct her, and tell her that she would more likely set fire to the house than blow it up). My brother started, to punish my mom; because after our dad died, she had quit for 6 months, then started up again (He was only 11 when he started). He quit just before his lung surgery, and hasn't smoked in 8 years. (I had a friend who quit, and twenty years later tells me that he still sometimes thinks about lighting up while sitting at a bar drinking some Chivas - and he never smoked even a half-pack a day).
..................................................................................................................................................
Friends and family, and fear are the tools you need to stop and stay off of them. (Nicotine gum and patches can help, but don't try to cheat - my brother was using the strongest patch, and chewing the gum several times a day, and still smoking 2-3 cigs a day! He's lucky his heart kept going - probably because he was in his 30's at the time).
..................................................................................................................................................
Good luck!
- reply
PermalinkAnti-smoking. Wow. I really loved the hook campaign that was banned - probably because, as Jack said: you can't handle the truth. I can't find the link to it though, but I'm sure you people know the campaign I mean.
Me? I gave up because my wife and I wanted to have a child and I didn't want to smoke around him/her. That was about 2 years ago. I wish now that I'd had kids earlier. Giving up is an easy thing to say, hard to do. However, I'm clean now and I don't really miss it. Except when I'm a little tipsy and then I really want a cigarette! I find myself being calmer (weirdly, as I used smoking to calm myself). I'm sure my daughter will be happy that I'm more likely to be around for her school sports days and all that.
The only disadvantage to not smoking is that I spend more time at my computer, although my employers would probably see it as an advantage.
One last thing: after quitting, I realised that smokers really do stink and not in a nice way. That's what I smelled like. Ugh.
I like the ad, too.
- reply
PermalinkPurpSi - Cigarettes DO calm you down, AFTER you've become addicted to them. I forget which set of brain/endrocine chemicals get depleted by overusing nicotine - when you don't have them, you get jittery and nervous. Nicotine substitutes for them, and does calm you down. After you break the habit, your body eventually restores those chemicals to their normal levels, and you can get calm naturally. [Nicotine 'fits' (as in 'throwing a fit') - friends of mine, who typically re-write songs and other material, liked to call them the 'Ficotine Nits'! These are the equivalent of the DT's in alcoholics, although not as severe).
Many people link nicotine use with particular activities - drinking (alcohol), using non-legal drugs, sex, the need to do something with your hands (and not look weird) - Everyone has their own set of activies they link. The link in your brain is VERY STRONG. [Members of Al-Anon, who are recovering heroin addicts, often cannot stop their smoking habits, it's that strong].
P.S. Congrats on getting smoke-free, and on becoming a dad.
- reply
PermalinkThere was a ad about 30 years ago, which showed a father and his 4-5 y.o. son, going around doing all sorts of things (outdoors, I believe), with the son doing what the father did. Then they relax under a tree, and the dad lights up a cigarette, and you see the boy take the pack (which the dad left lying on the grass next to him), and the ad ends with a tag line, much like this ad's - 'He wants to be just like you', or something.
So, is this a Badland, or another in a long string of ads, re-iterating the same message?
- reply
PermalinkThere's a whole load of ads about copying your parents running in the UK. The ideas aren't original, but they do make people think carefully about things.
Regarding your previous comment: I didn't know about the nicotine thing, which I guess is why people have a cigarette to calm themselves. I actually found myself to be angrier when I smoked and thus needed more cigarettes to calm down, so in a way they were partly responsible for my anger. Er, if that makes sense!
Anyway, I still prefer the unhooked one that, I believe, was also executed by the same agency. It was banned for being too scary! Come one, explain that one to me! "We'd like to stop people smoking, but not in any hard-hitting way. In fact, guilt works, so use that. Anything else is wrong." Sends out the wrong message if you ask me, which you didn't, but I gave my opinion anyway. :)
- reply
Permalink2 things -
1) The older ad I mentioned (and there were a series of them) was from the USA.
2) As you smoked, you would calm down, while the nicotine worked, but your body stopped producing the natural stuff** way back when you got hooked on cigarettes. Unfortunately, as you got more and more used to using tobacco, you needed more of it to calm down, and the effects lasted a shorter time. Plus, your body wasn't producing the natural chemicals anymore to allow you to calm down in the in-between times. Therefore, you are on a merry-go-round, chasing the nicotine. The more you use, the more you need,....
** Some of the chemicals in the blood and brain (that I've been writing about), include serotonin, adrenaline, pituitary hormones, catecholamines, and vasopressin.
Cocaine and heroin also deplete these chemicals. Nicotine doesn't produce as severe a reaction. [From "Intra-operative Refractory Hypotension compounded by Chronic Cocaine use" from The Internet Journal of Anesthesiology:
In conclusion, anesthesiologists must be aware of the cardiac complications associated with chronic cocaine use. After prolonged cocaine use, body's ability to continually release neurotransmitters for even normal physiologic purposes is hindered. Essentially they are “used up” and even additional cocaine use will not have the same physiologic effect. This results in an overall depletion of synaptic neurotransmitters and a depressed, rather than excitatory, state.].
- reply
PermalinkIt's a good ad, but it runs so often I'm heartily sick of it now.
Presumably parents of young children find it particularly attention-grabbing and attractive, with all the children cutely playing grown-up -- and then they're hit with the message. Which makes it a particularly effective ad.
I vaguely remember that US ad that Allan1 mentioned. It was pretty heavy-handed, but then it was 1960s America. Big " voiceover of God" hammering home: "Your child... he wants to be just like you... he wants to do everything you do..." etc etc. Must have had some sort of effect for me to remember it 40-odd years later.
- reply
Permalink