The latest spot in the "Truth" campaign from the American Legacy Foundation (ALF) debuted this past Monday, March 22. Part of the "Connect Truth" package of ads directed by David Gordon Green of bicoastal/international Chelsea Pictures, "Hair" opens on six young girls sitting in barbershop chairs along a busy city street—a barber stands alongside each chair. The barbers proceed to shave the girls’ heads, much to the shock of onlookers.
One of the girls holds an orange dot and says, "Thanks to a product tobacco companies sell, the U.S. gets about 445 new lung cancer patients every day." An orange string connects a photo of the girl holding the dot to another orange dot being held by a partially bald woman, who is undergoing chemotherapy. The female patient says, "When I was diagnosed, I learned that cigarette smoke contains eleven chemical compounds that are known to cause cancer. Well, they work."
All the shorn hair from the spot was donated to Locks of Love, a nonprofit organization that provides hairpieces to financially disadvantaged minors suffering from long-term, medical-related hair loss.
"Hair" continues what has been an ALF track record of spots—conceived by Arnold Worldwide, Boston, and Crispin Porter+Bogusky, Miami—that have struck a responsive chord with its target audience, kids ages 12 to 17. In the two years since the campaign began, smoking among high school students has decreased by nearly 25 percent.
But despite—or perhaps because of—this effectiveness, the "Truth" campaign is in jeopardy of losing its funding from America’s leading tobacco companies. Under terms of a $206 billion settlement reached in 1998 between the nation’s four largest tobacco companies (Philip Morris, Lorillard, R.J. Reynolds, Brown & Williamson) and attorneys general in 46 states, the tobacco firms were to provide $300 million in annual funding to public health organization ALF. In fact, ALF was borne out of that settlement.
The language of that settlement agreement called for the annual funding as long as the four major tobacco companies held a 99 percent-plus share of the cigarette market. But that share unexpectedly dipped this past year due to inroads made by discount manufacturers.
Thus, tobacco’s big four have reportedly decided to stop making payments to ALF. Carol Crosslin, a spokesperson for R.J. Reynolds, is quoted in a Los Angeles Times article as saying, "We have fulfilled our financial obligation."
However, the question remains of fulfilling a moral obligation. By withholding financial support, said Joseph A. Califano Jr., secretary of Health, Education and Welfare during the Carter administration, "tobacco companies condemn millions of children and teens to premature death and disability." Califano made his remarks during a press conference held to announce a petition drive to urge the tobacco industry to continue its funding of the "Truth" campaign.
The petition drive has been put in motion by several former U.S. health secretaries, surgeons general and directors of the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention going back as far as the Johnson administration. They have formed a coalition, the Citizens’ Commission to Protect the Truth. Califano, who is the commission’s chairman, said, "We cannot let Big Tobacco destroy the most effective media campaign we have to curb smoking by children and teens."
While $300 million is a lot of money by most standards, it’s a drop in the bucket relative to what Big Tobacco spends to promote and market their products in the U.S. annually: upwards of $11 billion.
