French Ad Shocks, but Will It Stop Young Smokers?

[ccharles000]

PARIS — A new French antismoking advertisement aimed at the young that plays off a pornographic stereotype has gotten more attention than even its creators intended, and critics suggest that it offends common decency and creates a false analogy between oral sex and smoking.

France has banned smoking in cafes, bars and restaurants. But smoking is still increasing among the young in France, according to the French Office for the Prevention of Smoking, prompting an antitobacco organization called Droits des Non-fumeurs, or Nonsmokers’ Rights, to create the ad.

The slogan is bland enough: “To smoke is to be a slave to tobacco.” But it accompanies photographs of an older man, his torso seen from the side, pushing down on the head of a teenage girl with a cigarette in her mouth. Her eyes are at belt level, glancing upward fearfully. The cigarette appears to emerge from the adult’s trousers.

Two other ads show young men in the same position as the girl, though the adult is wearing a suit jacket and a watch.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/24/world/europe/24france.html?hp

[Warpy]

1. Kids will, of course, laugh at it

but the "suck my (corporate) dick" imagery might stay with them long enough to get them to think about just what kind of weasels they're giving their money to every time they light up.

[Demoiselle]

2. Silly. Just silly. You can't die from THAT!

Slavery ? Some people enjoy such activity. Wouldn't it be more effective to run ads picturing emphysema and copd victims in the last throes of their lives, battling for air?

[dipsydoodle]

3. Probably more effective

http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_xfxmmOzXySs/SfA2Z-HFpuI/AAAAAAAAAko/ESGBPEiQ1cA/s400/anti+smoking+poster.jpg

[Demoiselle]

4. Now THAT's what I'm talking about!

[demosincebirth]

6. Governments spends millions of dollars researching what advertisements

would be more effective in deterring smoking when a simple one like yours would probably make more teenagers stop and think about smoking

[customerserviceguy]

5. Good luck with that campaign

Even the very word 'cigarette' is French. It's about as much a part of that culture as wine is.

[Liberal_in_LA]

7. one of the ads