10/11/2015
From: http://wordlesstech.com/anti-smoking-advertisements/
Administered by the County of Orange Health Care Agency
Published 2015 by wordlesstech.com
Advertisements face us everywhere we go and are always trying to get people to buy or do something. There has been recently a huge increase in the amount of tobacco-free advertisements, including this one. This advertisement encourages people to stop smoking because it will make them prettier. Saying that quitting smoking is a "cheaper" way to get more beautiful feeds off of the consumers need to get everything as cheap as possible and quickly. The woman in the advertisement has a portion of her face wrinkled and an ash color with yellow teeth holding a cigarette to show what smoking will make you look like. The rest of her face is what American society would consider beautiful to show the difference between the two sides. The advertisers purposely put the phone number to call in a bright color so that it draws the readers attention and has the tag-line at the top so that the consumer reads it.
This advertisement plays off of America's importance of beauty to put down smoking cigarettes. This relates to the deadly sin of pride in our appearance, especially the line of "looking smoking hot." Smoking is known to cause the problems depicted in this advertisement such as wrinkles and yellowing teeth but the advertisement exaggerates these features in order to scare smokers into following their advice and quitting smoking. This advertisement does not however mention the health risks of smoking but focuses on purely the external affects on people's looks, which hints to people's aesthetic focus. Pride in appearance is the deadly sin used in this advertisement because of the phrase "looking smoking hot," which is a common phrase used to describe a vain perspective. Although this advertisements purpose is a purpose that will benefit people by quitting smoking it goes about it the wrong way by promoting aesthetic improvement instead of the health benefits.
The intended audience of this advertisement is current smokers who have not currently tried to quit or are struggling to quit. Most of these people will be people around the age of forty because this generation statistically smoked the most because since then the health risks of smoking has caused a decline in smoking. The target audience is people who haven't already quit smoking and may be struggling which is persuaded by the prospect of gaining beauty. This people have the cultural knowledge that smoking is bad for your health but smoking is still considered as something that "cool" people do. This advertisement appeals to these people because of the beauty of the woman and the sharp contrast with the wrinkles and yellow teeth of the cigarette part.
