November
2007
Do We See the Slow Bullet?
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Earlier this week, the American Cancer Society sent us the Great American Smokeout QuitLiveWin contest winners. Some of the videos are exceptionally compelling, such as the one featured here. But what strikes us is that - like most smoking messages - they do tend to focus on the negative (smoking causes cancer, and don’t you care about your life, and couldn’t you at least quit for your loved ones?). But smokers already know their addiction is unhealthy.
Of course, shock value wouldn’t have the “value” part if that weren’t true. And humans do struggle with risk assessment and those “slow bullets”. But we wonder if there is a more positive approach to helping the millions of Americans addicted to nicotine quit the habit.
What do you think?
Technorati Tags: smoking, nicotine, addiction, cigarette, great american smokeout, cancer, quitlivewin, video, contest
Brilliant. Absolutely brilliant.
That’s right up there with the first time I saw the Australian anti-smoking ad campaign. In 10′ tall pictures in the airport, side-by-side images of a healthy lung and a smoker’s lung.
We American’s are too namby pamby about such things.
For starters, we have to treat smokers like adults, which the majority of them are. Unless they’re exercising a lot of willful ignorance and denial, they KNOW the risks and choose to do it anyway out of a combination of it being a big simple pleasure in their life and that bad risk assessment/perception thing.
The sheer contempt in so many anti-smoking ads doesn’t sway them, it makes them want to light up another one just for the “F you too” of it all. It makes anti-smokers feel righteous, but it doesn’t do a thing to sway smokers.
Lots of people care more for their loved ones than they do for themselves- I know I’m one of that number. Almost all the ex-smokers I know finally mustered the will to quit because they didn’t want to put their families through the eventual consequences. So, yes, talk about the health risks, but don’t take the “smokers have been deluded by the tobacco companies and every one of them is going to explode when they turn fifty” line, which implies they are very stupid, emphasize the impact of those problems on loved ones.