The 4 Types of Anti-Smoking Commercials

by Brian Murphy on April 07, 2009

^Not a smoker.

Use a Ton of Props to Annoy People

Sure, people know that smoking kills you. But can they visualize it? Maybe if they saw a crowded city street full of crying baby dolls or a hospital entrance blocked off by 70 empty stretchers they'd finally understand.

Never mind the fact that tripping over a f*cking toy on your way to work or not being able to get into a hospital is way more annoying than secondhand smoke. They can edit in little orange dots over the heads of passersby and make it look like they learned something from their little melodramatic street performance!

Besides, how would we have ever known that smoking causes cancer had some smug twenty-something not been yelling about it through a megaphone? I mean, it's not like it's written on the package or anything. Or that Generation Y has been raised in society that openly condemns it.

If only there was something like this written on the ACTUAL package!

The Ol' PR Switcheroo

Selling cigarettes isn't exactly an ethical line of work, but do we really expect tobacco companies not to operate like a business? Is it all that surprising that they'd try to sugarcoat their product?

Apparently. One of the anti-smokers' favorite commercial templates involves criticizing Big Tobacco PR. This is done in one of two ways; either by incorporating a dumb quote into a little song and dance, or yelling it at a building through a megaphone.

"Did you know that before the Civil War, Big Tobacco supported slavery?"

The funny thing is, they usually pull quotes from a few decades ago. These people are speaking out against a notoriously shady industry and the best they can do is make fun of things people said in 1988. Bravo.

The Gross Out Method

These commercials graphically explore the lungs of a diseased smoker. This is supposed to shock and offend people. And it does. But you know what else would just as easily shock and offend? Regular lungs.

Healthy? Unhealthy? Gross either way.

The Zinger

"The Zinger" is when an anti-smoking spokes-hipster asks some unsuspecting worker a question, in a thinly veiled attempt to make a cigarette analogy. For instance:

Here's a joke for ya! A guy walks into a gun store. He says to the clerk, he says, "Got any light bullets?" *Cue Rimshot* Get it!? They both kill people, but guns are better because they don't misrepresent themselves!

CIGARETTES AND GUNS ARE EXACTLY THE SAME.

Yeah, bullets are a lot like cigarettes. If you shoot yourself with a pack of bullets every day for 30 years, you might die 10 years earlier than you should have.

Right, smartass?

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