The recent government funded anti-smoking campaign proved to be more effective than originally thought–convincing up to fifty thousand people to quit the habit.
The ad campaign, Tips From Former Smokers, featured fourteen horribly scarred and disfigured former smokers relating their stories. To make the advertisement even more horrific, most of the participants were revealed to have contracted life-altering diseases before reaching the age of forty.
As the government’s first national anti-smoking campaign in thirty years, the fifty four million dollars spent to produce the campaign was worth every penny as the Center for Disease Control and Prevention rallied up to fifty thousand smokers to end their addiction.
It was shown through television commercials, print, billboards, bus shelters, cinemas, digital and radio outlets. As a result, The hotline 1-800-QUIT-NOW also experienced record calls of 365,000 callers and the website www.smokefree.gov incurred over 417,000 unique visitors per week.
The campaign is a response to the Family Smoking Prevention and Tobacco Act signed into law by President Barack Obama back in 2009. It is also a result of a failed government attempt to force manufacturers to put graphic warning labels. The court ruled this kind of advisory violated the First Amendment because it is not neutral and factual.
The government learned that when it comes to public advisories, fear still works.
Lance Mounsey
Lance Mounsey is a professor in Marketing in a university in New York. He has also worked as a copywriter in a well-known advertising agency
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