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"Truth Anti-Smoking" ads most insidious thing on television?
FTV
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Am I the only one that notices that in every one of those "Truth anti-smoking" TV ads, despite whatever purportedly accurate statistics are stated, the people speaking out against smoking are portrayed in as negative an emotional light as possible? The first rule of advertising is to appeal to the viewer's emotions instead of their mind and when they're constantly making people against smoking appear rude, obnoxious, and generally like total freaks, one must question the real motives to this long running ad campaign. An ad campaign funded by tobacco companies. Is this a clear conspiracy to promote smoking while pretending to fight it or am I just seeing things?
FTV on
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The advertising firm did a great job at making people immediately tune-off and dismiss the ads. No evidence that this is true but come-on.
I do like the "Magical Amount" one though.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o5WpKBKqvKw
Let's just ignore the whole concept of rubber bullets, though, right?
I guess what really annoys me is horrible analogies.
On the black screen
The best one I've seen is a kid sitting on a couch describing all of the horrible things that can happen to you and the ways you can die if you go outside, instead of smoking marijuana and being safe.
No. No. No.
...What?
Here's the kind of thing they have on their site. A conceited cartoon vomiting some "truth" in the form of drippy hearts. Yeah, this doesn't reinforce the idea that anti-smoking activists are dicks (not that that isn't true). That thing is probably supposed to be an actual dick.
Reefer Madness wasn't an anti-drug ad. It was just an exploitation film.
And have the anti-drug ads gotten any worse than it?
http://www.ducktexas.com/
Listening to a poorly-drawn duck "sing" feels like getting shot in the chest.
Yeah but I'm not sure what's actually harmful about that except that it's annoying. And so you turn it off. Because it also lacks any significant penetration.
My favorite one to pick in the the Above the Influence ones (characterized by the little cartoon dog raising a flag with its own face drawn on it high on a flag pole. Fucking arrogant doggie prick.) Anyway, the best thing about is they're all, "Hey, people try to get you to do drugs. Be above the influence and don't do what people tell you to do. Do what WE tell you to do instead."
"You don't always die from tobacco, sometimes you just lose a lung"
I love that ad. The song is catchy and he sings better with that machine then I do normally. So I give the other Truth ads a pass just because of that that one.
"Oh look we're hip young people fighting 'da Tobacco Industry' let's go make hip trendy protests about it!"
"All Mexicans are crazy, and it's this stuff* that makes them crazy."
*marijuana
Speaking of which the whole "Marijuana helps fund terrorism" was good for a laugh as was the "If you use marijuana you'll find your dad's unlocked and loaded gun and shoot your friend with it but don't blame the dad for lack of proper gun safety blame the blunt!"
What about those really disturbing anti-meth adverts? One I remember was "My girlfriend would do anything for me. So I made her sell her body."
Yeah. If I was an impressionable young'ne that would have just impressionabled me to stay the fuck away from meth.
12 days later you're in an asylum and think that you are an orange.
The anti-meth ads are the best. I remember on when you watch some girls face just ... decompose in from a mirror as she talked about doing meth. I mean like black blood poured out of her mouth.
Cause, god damn
that's why we call it the struggle, you're supposed to sweat
Come on out West and meet our Anti-Meth ads!
Example: http://www.montanameth.org/View_Ads/index.php
Huge and gross ad aimed at teens
The only ad I've seen about smoking that I didn't think was retarded is an old guy with a gravelly voice talking to the camera. He says some stuff about how his wife kept telling him to quit, and he would tell her "It's my life I'll do what I want with it." Then he says his wife died of lung cancer. "My wife...was my life. My wife was my life."
Simply put human stories like that are more powerful than stacking up mannequin bodies in front of tobacco HQ or other outrageous stuff like that.
Seriously. Why would I ask you in particular to smoke instead of some random street-corner junkie? Maybe because I like you and want to hang out with you, maybe it's less about the drugs than about the people, maybe smoking pot doesn't make me a crack-head.
The one about the man's wife who died from the second hand smoke always made me have to leave the room.
That and my own family's addiction steers me away from it. It used to be just the parents, but now my sister's gotten her hands on them and despite my warnings she continues to smoke. At the very least I'm not going to start myself.