It’s the part of biology class some of us dreaded in high school–the frog dissection. Two students sit side by side, each with a dead frog immersed in a glass jar of formaldehyde on their desks. As we hear the instructor in the background, one of the pupils, a female, picks up her jar and drinks all the formaldehyde, leaving only the frog.
The male student seated next to her looks on in disbelief as she chug-a-lugs the liquid. She then looks at his frog jar and asks him, “You gonna drink that?” She’s poised to have another pause that refreshes.
The spot ends with a super against the backdrop of a frog that reads, “Cigarettes contain formaldehyde, the stuff used to preserve dead frogs.” This message is accompanied by a Web side address, ydouthink.com, for a youth smoking awareness program sponsored by the Virginia Tobacco Settlement Foundation.
“Frog” is one of three spots in a Virginia Tobacco Settlement Foundation campaign directed by David Jaffe of bicoastal Playroom for Barber Martin Advertising, Richmond, Va. The other commercials were “Belly” and “Off to School.”
In the latter, a mother drives her son to high school. She is smoking in the car, with the windows rolled up.. He coughs in protest but she doesn’t stop puffing. Finally to let her know how he feels, the lad passes gas, gets out of the car and goes off to class.
In “Belly,” we’re treated to a belly dancing performance–not by lovely lasses but by overweight teen boys. As their body fat jiggles, culminating in one guy belly fat slamming another, a super makes us aware that smoking increases the production of belly fat in teenagers.
Jaffe’s support team at Playroom included executive producer Debbie Merlin, producer JP Greaney and partner/managing director Carol Case. The DP was Tim Ives.
The agency creative ensemble consisted of creative director Patti Shulman, associate creative director/copywriter Jim Gentry, senior copywriter Bonnie Larner and director of broadcast production/producer Greg Simos.
Editor was Mike Colao of Final Cut, New York. Colorist was Tom Poole of The Mill, New York. Terressa Tate of Final Cut served as sound designer/audio mixer.
Supreme Court Seems Likely To Uphold A Law That Could Force TikTok To Shut Down On Jan. 19
The Supreme Court on Friday seemed likely to uphold a law that would ban TikTok in the United States beginning Jan. 19 unless the popular social media program is sold by its China-based parent company.
Hearing arguments in a momentous clash of free speech and national security concerns, the justices seemed persuaded by arguments that the national security threat posed by the company's connections to China override concerns about restricting the speech either of TikTok or its 170 million users in the United States.
Early in arguments that lasted more than two and a half hours, Chief Justice John Roberts identified his main concern: TikTok's ownership by China-based ByteDance and the parent company's requirement to cooperate with the Chinese government's intelligence operations.
If left in place, the law passed by bipartisan majorities in Congress and signed by President Joe Biden in April will require TikTok to "go dark" on Jan. 19, lawyer Noel Francisco told the justices on behalf of TikTok.
At the very least, Francisco urged, the justices should enter a temporary pause that would allow TikTok to keep operating. "We might be in a different world again" after President-elect Donald Trump takes office on Jan. 20. Trump, who has 14.7 million followers on TikTok, also has called for the deadline to be pushed back to give him time to negotiate a "political resolution." Francisco served as Trump's solicitor general in his first presidential term.
But it was not clear whether any justices would choose such a course. And only Justice Neil Gorsuch sounded like he would side with TikTok to find that the ban violates the Constitution.
Gorsuch labeled arguments advanced by the Biden administration' in defense of the law a... Read More