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.
The fact that you chose this advertisement in particular is very interesting to me. I personally may not have thought about it in the negative context of using the deadly sins because it does have a positive purpose of helping people to stop smoking.
ReplyDeleteI do agree with most of your analysis; this ad is definitely playing on pride and vanity. I think the model is a visual hyperbole of the effects of stopping smoking because she is sort of this perfect image of beauty. It is using this idea that stopping smoking will make you look better. I also think that this ad used greed as well. By using "cheaper" this illustrates the intended audience's greed for money, and vanity is essentially greed for beauty. Overall, I am really glad you chose this ad and I agree wholeheartedly that smokers should find a way to quit for their health. This brings up the question if this ad is effective in its positive purpose using negative devices (sins), is it really a negative thing?
I really like your choice of advertisement for this post. I would be careful with repetition of similar ideas within the same paragraph, like referencing the "looking smoking hot" in the same paragraph. That being said, I think that the way you described the message of the advertisement as focusing on aesthetic beauty and not the health effects of smoking was insightful and brings to question what people in our society value. Good job.
ReplyDeleteWow! Great analysis. It really made me think about the ethics behind advertising and convincing / manipulating / persuading the general public. For example with your chosen advertisement is it ethical to manipulate people in order to get them to stop polluting their bodies? Initially I (and I believe everyone else) would say yes but then I thought a bit deeper. By saying that the non smoking half of the models face is hot it is implying that a skinny white female wearing makeup is what hot means. This then made me wonder what is the impact of this ad on African Americans who smoke. Does it propagate the fact that being white means you are inately more attractive? Also as you stated that the target audience is older (40+) people I additionally wondered if this ad was propagating the stereotype of youth being the only method to be beautiful.
ReplyDeleteGreat blog, very thought provoking!