There is a new truth in town as PLAYROOM Director David Jaffee just wrapped up three commercials for the Virginia Tobacco Settlement Foundation and their ydouthink.com campaign.
The boys belly dancing is a must see, spoofing all music videos since forever these guys are great. The tag at the end is for everyone who laughed with a cigarette dangling between their bony fingers.
These other two films I'm not so sure are in the same campaign, the tone is miles different, and I'm not so sure the one below, with the frog is good. The main grossness factor there is "eww, frog" rather than "eew, formaldehyde," which as everyone knows is also used to preserve dead humans in open-cascet cultures like in the USA. One should be saying "eew formaldehyde," though, as that stuff can kill you. My main objection with this idea is that die-hard smokers might defend their addiction by switching to "all naturals".
I think these ads are for non-smokers who like the arrogant and condescending tone and the exaggeration of the ads.
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PermalinkExaggeration in advertising isn't exactly a new idea, but it's used because it works. My guess is that these ads are meant to make the TA feel uncomfortable. I think they work well.
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PermalinkTo equate smoking a cigarette containing 0.035 - 0.13 mg of formaldehyde with drinking a large volume of formaldehyde is too much exaggeration for me.
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