Tobacco Control Videos

Why I had to stop providing new content for this blog

The reason I had to stop is  classical: no more funding :(
I find it sad that such a service about communication campaigns  is terminated that way.

Critics of the EU Nicomarket Campaign

Some Tobacco Control advocates consider that targeting nicotine is a faulty move. They wonder what the EU tobacco control experts input was for this campaign.

Finding Johan Cruyff on YouTube

Here, is a copy of the famous spot where Johan Cruyff juggles with a cigarette pack. Hopefully the link will not be broken. If it is, go to Youtube and search for Cruyff antitobacco :) you should find another copy.

3 new anti-smoking films in the UK

The BREATHE campaign - organised by Channel 4's 4Talent, Cancer Research UK and the Department of Health (DoH) - asked aspiring directors to send in their compact cinematic ideas about smoking.
The movies can be viewed on Youtube:

• A girl coughs up a lung.
• A wild party and the aging girl.
• Slaughterhouse.

Be A Reel Hero contest gets an extension

The deadline for the California Department of Public Health's "Be A Reel Hero" anti-smoking video contest has been extended from December 17, 2007 to January 10, 2008.  Californians will have an extra three weeks to submit their 30-second anti-smoking commercial for the chance to have their ad air on TV in California in the Spring of 2008.

Argentina: Programa Nacional de Control del tabaco

A whole series of video spots (in spanish), here :)

grlswhosmkrhot (on You Tube)

The type of (pro)smoking videos and (pro)smoking accounts on YouTube that makes you wonder who is really behind them.

400 cigarettes experiment and the ambiguities of YouTube

This 4 minute video shows how much tar is produced when smoking (artificially) 400 cigarettes. It was first posted on Liveleak  and has made its way on Youtube in various copies. BUT the "related videos" that can be found on the right side of the screen when you look at this anti-smoking film are ALL videos of people smoking :(
That also gives an idea of the number of (pro)smoking videos on YouTube (see below).

Victoria (Australia): Smokers get lung cancer reminder

The council and anti-smoking body Quit on Monday relaunched their 23-year-old television advertisement showing a smoker's lung, represented by a sponge, filling with tar and being squeezed out into a beaker.

Research from the Cancer Council Victoria shows that despite smoking accounting for 80 per cent of all lung cancer cases, six in 10 smokers did not mention it when asked to name diseases caused by smoking.

Massachusets: Old TV ads are back with a few new ones too.

State public health authorities unveiled the antismoking campaign yesterday, promising to spend about $1.5 million to run the ads for five months on television stations in Boston, Springfield, and Southeastern Massachusetts and to plaster the ads on the Internet and at transit stops.
Source: The Boston Globe

Be a Reel Hero: Californians Called on to Create the Next Anti-Tobacco TV Ad

The California Department of Public Health launched the "Be a Reel Hero" video contest today, asking Californians to create its next great anti-tobacco TV commercial.  The contest invites all creative Californians to use their talent to save lives by producing a compelling 30 second video that communicates California's anti-smoking message.

EU: Nicomarket with Nicoclean, Nicobreeze, Nicoteeth Nicovox

The European Union is launching an anti-smoking campaign with a series of tongue-in-cheek viral ads promoting fake nicotine-based products. Developed by French agency Ligaris, the campaign also includes a spoof website, nicomarket.com, for a corporation peddling the products - complete with a contact email address and chairman profile.

Source: Guardian

Against Litter: Now Look What You Did

Two firms based in Minneapolis have created this animated video against litter. WATCH

Australia: Anti-smoking 'Sponge" ad squeezed again

It so successfully turned people off smoking in the 1980s, the tobacco lobby tried to have it banned.
Now, a revamped anti-smoking "sponge" advertisement is to hit TV screens again this weekend, with the New South Wales Government hoping it will be just as effective with a new generation of smokers.  WATCH

Colorado: An Animated Movie for the Own your C campaign

Below is the pr release by the ad agency. I must say I am not convinced. Do kids go to the site?

China: Broadcasting watchdog to limit smoking scenes

CHINA'S broadcasting watchdog has decided to intensify the supervision on smoking scenes in movies and TV series.

In a recent statement released by the State Administration of Radio Film and Television (SARFT), censoring institutions and TV drama and film producers were asked to try their best to avoid "unnecessary and long-time smoking scenes."

Washington State: More about the new No Stank You campaign: Gross, weird, good.

Youth Anti-Smoking Campaign Gets Fashionable according to Adrants:

WongDoody, which recently brought us the clever Horizon Air campaign, has extended its No Stank You youth anti-smoking campaign for the Washington State Department of Health with a social media and fashion styled campaign.

The program is described thusly, "To earn a free No Stank You shirt, teens visit No Stank You and participate in the "Do 3, Get T" incentive program. Points are awarded for adding a No Stank You banner to a personal Web site, submitting an original tee design, referring a friend to the No Stank You site and more. Each activity is worth one point. Three points earns a free tee."

Supporting the effort are TV and radio. View one of the six spots here. Gross. Weird. Good.

New York State: Smoked out kids to promote the quitline

This ad is aired in New York State to promote the quitline. On YouTube.
The parents smoke and smoke is coming out of their children's noses...

Source: adfreak.com

UK: Teenagers asked to make films

Teenagers are being asked to make films for Channel 4 to encourage their contemporaries to quit smoking.

The online competition is being launched with Cancer Research UK and DJ Spoony to coincide with new legislation which makes it illegal to sell tobacco to under-18s.

United Kingdom, Quit because: Sexiness in a stick

Quit has produced two new web-videos and both are on YouTube: Sexiness in a stick and Smoking Fox (or The Ventriloquist). Quit has also opened a channel on YouTube.

The new campaign in Washington State

This article in the Seattle Post Intelligencer describes how the spots are selected and the results obtained in Washington State.

$3 million to promote the quitline in Oklahoma

The state's Tobacco Settlement Endowment Trust board has agreed to put nearly one-third of its $13.3 million budget into media campaigns intended to help people stop, or never start, smoking.

Source: AP

A New York Times blog about the anti-smoking ads from Victoria now aired in New York City

"It wasn’t enough to show Ronaldo Martinez, who has to breathe through a hole in his throat as a result of years of smoking.

New York City health officials have taken their gross-out antismoking campaign one step further. They are in the midst of a three-week television blitz with a pair of the most gruesome and grisly advertisements in the city’s war against cigarettes." Source: New York Times Blog City Room

Oceania Conference: Airing quit campaigns on YouTube

Becky Freeman, from the University of Sydney, told the Oceania Tobacco Control Conference in Auckland, New Zealand that YouTube could be a new medium for cessation campaigns:

"If the material is entertaining and amusing it can become very popular. Producing unique content for YouTube, as opposed to posting already existing television campaigns, is a strategy that needs to be explored and evaluated for effectiveness.

"There is potential to conduct a very cost effective YouTube quit campaign."

The smoking apple

This animated clip was produced by Alvin Lim, Ng Wan Churn, Pan Jing, Lee Ailin in Singapore. On YouTube

Q&A: Legacy's Cheryl Healton interviewed in AdWeek

Cheryl Healton about smoking in movies and Legacy's strategy.

New York City airs two Australian Ads

The ads produced originally by Quit Victoria show an actual operation on a woman's neck to remove a blood clot in the main artery to the brain (2007) and a gangrenous foot about to be amputated (2006).
They are aired during sport shows.
Source: New York Post  Watch 1  Watch 2

France: Recycling the 2006 Toxic Corp/Replacement smoker campaign

Young people visit the TOXIC Corp's plant where they see bodies of dead smokers they are recruited to replace: the motto is Tobacco kills one of two smokers. The industry needs you to replace them. Produced for the French Health Ministry via the Health Prevention Agency (INPES). There is also the  TOXIC Corp website.
The clip is on TV from August 20 to September 9.  WATCH, YT      

European Union: the HELP anti-tobacco campaign

This presentation by Pierre Siquier, of the Ligaris Advertising agency, about the HELP campaign is to be delivered during the 4th European Conference on Tobacco or Health.

Switzerland: TV spots 2007

3 spots have been produced in 2007 for the Swiss DOH. They congratulate (Bravo) organizations that have gone smokefree: a university, a hotel, a gymnastic club.
The motto is "Less smoke, more life", the spots are in French, German and Italian.

On YouTube: Ghetto Science - Smoking

This 3 minute + video, produced in Sidney in one hour by Mike Atrix was posted on YouTube on July 15 2007. One month later it has been seen by more than one million people. Thank you to Simon Chapman who pointed it to us :)

Bollywood Actress Rani Mukherji to film an anti-smoking ad

From a blog covering Bollywood we learn that: Apart from a scene or two in her films, Rani Mukerji has never touched a cigarette in her life. A story that Rani has been lately puffing on the cancer stick has her family and friends amused exasperated and bewildered.

Ironically, the story about her smoking comes at a time Rani is all set to do a campaign against smoking.

Says the friend, “Rani had decided to do an anti-smoking campaign on television even before this story came out.

Chantix Users Blog

Google pointed me to this blog devoted to quitting with the help of Chantix. It turns out there are many other bloggers writing about their quit experience: a whole lot of them.

The return of anti-smoking ads in Florida: not before 2008

Thanks to the voters intiative that changed the constitution the funding for the tobacco control program is back in Florida ($58 million for 2007) but it looks like the new media campaign will not start this year.

Denise Sullivan about the campaigns of the Cancer Council Western Australia

This cyber-interview was originally published on the rendezvous blog (Rendez-Vous 169 July 10, 2007)

Philippe Boucher: Hello Denise. Nice to have you back for a rendez-vous since our previous cyber-interview took place on March 31, 1999. You are still very much involved in tobacco control. Can you update the professional information about yourself?

Denise Sullivan: Thank you Philippe.  I am pleased to say I am still very involved in tobacco control, although now working in the non-government sector.  In August 2000, I took up the inaugural position of Director of The Cancer Council Western Australia’s Tobacco Program (known then as ‘Target 15’).

A study looks at the indirect route (via peers) that messages often take

“Anti-smoking ads have the greatest impact on smoking attitudes and behavior when adolescents think that their peers are listening to those messages,” Paek said. “And that makes sense because people are more likely to listen to what their close peers say rather than what the media says.”

Is user generated content an option for anti-tobacco ads?

That's the way Al Gore wants to go with his new Ecospot initiative. Could that model also apply for anti-tobacco campaigns?
Source: The New York Times

A study of Anti-Tobacco Advertising by the University of Arkansas

Marketing researchers at the University of Arkansas have completed a study of the impact of an anti-tobacco advertising campaign and found that attitudes toward the campaign and the campaign message were positively connected to the consideration among smokers to kick the habit.

Tobacco farming issues on the blog Sidewalk Radio

Films about tobacco farming are available on Sidewalk radio the blog created by Marty Otañez. The name Sidewalk is a reference to the way people in Africa describe the information you get from the street. I was accustomed to the french version "radio trottoir" but had never  encountered the english one.

The lost promise of an antismoking vaccine, by Howard Koh

The lost promise of an antismoking vaccine is an opinion editorial by Howard Koh that was published on July 11, 2007 in the Boston Globe.
It reflects on the Massachusetts Tobacco Control Program that was gutted in 2002.

IMAGINE first creating, and then essentially abandoning, an innovative life-saving vaccine. Sadly, that is what has happened in Massachusetts.

In 1992, voters approved a statewide program designed to counter the devastating health effects of tobacco. By supporting a 25-cent-per-pack increase in the state cigarette excise tax to fund this initiative, voters put their trust in a solemn investment to lift our collective health.

Will Ronaldo Martinez's ads return to Massachusetts?

Maybe. According to this article from the Boston Globe where I discovered the ads that have been airing in New York City had initially been produced in Massachusetts, before the drastic budget cuts in the tobacco control program.

The Critics' Choice 2007

The Critic's Choice program runs from May 30 to September 29: students in various Australian states will watch and rate 12 anti-smoking TV ads. An interesting initiative.

A Thematic Typology Of Anti-smoking Spots, by Richard Raskin

This article published by Richard Raskin in March 2005 is an interesting attempt to build a typology of anti-smoking spots. Unfortunately many of the links to the actual spots posted at the end no longer work. Interviews with film makers and producers bring  useful context.

J'arrête, j'y gagne, Quit and Win, in Québec

This short ad (15 sec) was aired to promote the yearly Quit and Win competition in Québec. 25K+ smokers took part. WATCH (in French).

Cigarettes Falling From The Sky On Children

This famous clip from California where cigarettes fall from the sky ends up with the line: "How low will they go to make a profit". On YouTube

Don't smoke around your child: Quit

This ad about children and secondhand smoke was produced for the Free Michigan Quitline in 2004. Found on YouTube via a blogger who has collected a series of anti-smoking videos (from YouTube)

Trish Cotter about the media campaigns of the Cancer Institute in New South Wales

This cyber-interview was originally posted in the Rendez-vous blog.

Thank you Trish for taking the time to be with us today.
May I ask you to introduce yourself?

Trish Cotter: My first ever job after University (BSc) was with the Victorian Quit Campaign (over 20 years ago). It was just being set up and I was the second person to be employed.  My first role was as a project assistant and I expected to be at Quit Victoria for 12 months and then move on to something else.  Thirteen years later I finally moved on having had many different roles and seen lots of exciting changes such as banning tobacco advertising and the first well funded mass media campaigns.

This cyber-interview was originally posted in the Rendez-vous blog.

Thank you Trish for taking the time to be with us today.
May I ask you to introduce yourself?

Trish Cotter: My first ever job after University (BSc) was with the Victorian Quit Campaign (over 20 years ago). It was just being set up and I was the second person to be employed.  My first role was as a project assistant and I expected to be at Quit Victoria for 12 months and then move on to something else.  Thirteen years later I finally moved on having had many different roles and seen lots of exciting changes such as banning tobacco advertising and the first well funded mass media campaigns.

There are many methods to quit smoking.

That's the theme of this TV ad produced for UK's gosmokefree.
Also in the Globalink's multimedia center :)

Lunchbox

This TV ad posted on YouTube is supposedly from the UK's NHS but that needs to be verified. WATCH

Another EU-HELP TV Ad: "Absurd Zone"

The name of this campaign is "Absurd Zone".
WATCH

Also on the Help Ad-Folio.