“Using tobacco is bad for your social life.” That’s the message behind Seattle agency WongDoody’s “No Stank You” anti-tobacco campaign for the Washington State Department of Health.
“Teens today are well aware of the health effects of using tobacco “Our approach is to tell kids something different that has immediate resonance,” said Tracy Wong, WongDoody chairman and creative director, about why this yearlong effort eschews traditional anti-tobacco messaging focusing instead on the social and cosmetic consequences of smoking and tobacco use.
“The mission for the target, 12-14 teens, is to prevent them from starting. If they never start smoking, it solves a lot of problems immediately.”
Like the overall campaign The NoStankYou.com Web site also takes a unique approach to anti-tobacco advocacy–it is home to the “No Stank You NOW” video log, an online news/entertainment show hosted by local teens, for teens, on the social risks of tobacco use. The vlog features interviews with peers, state officials, dentists, professional athletes and more.
For instance, one of the hosts goes on a shopping spree to show kids all the cool stuff she can buy for $6, the price of a pack of cigarettes. Or watch another host shed light on the statistic that 86 percent of teens prefer dating a nonsmoker. New vlog episodes, produced in-house, will be uploaded regularly.
“True engagement with the target comes on the Web. Not from TV. The Web is the only way we can deep dive with them on information, etc.,” said Wong. Designed by WONGDOODY’s interactive and technology development division, United^Future, the NoStankYou.com site is also filled with irreverent, interactive and portable content. Users are given code snippets for avatars, comment images, emotions and more, to post into blogs, MySpace and YouTube pages, personal Web sites and mp3 players. A news fact page offers rotating factoids and articles about tobacco use.
“The campaign’s online component is truly exciting in the anti-tobacco advocacy arena, a category that is already recognized for its creativity,” said Wong. “By arming teens with tools to disseminate humorous content in various ways, they become advocates of the anti-tobacco message.”
The campaign also consists of television commercials, radio and online ads–including seven TV spots directed by Geordie Stephens of bicoastal Tool of North America.
Jules Feiffer, Pulitzer Prize-Winning Cartoonist and Writer, Dies At 95
Jules Feiffer, a Pulitzer Prize-winning cartoonist and writer whose prolific output ranged from a long-running comic strip to plays, screenplays and children's books, died Friday. He was 95 and, true to his seemingly tireless form, published his last book just four months ago.
Feiffer's wife, writer JZ Holden, said Tuesday that he died of congestive heart failure at their home in Richfield Springs, New York, and was surrounded by friends, the couple's two cats and his recent artwork.
Holden said her husband had been ill for a couple of years, "but he was sharp and strong up until the very end. And funny."
Artistically limber, Feiffer hopscotched among numerous forms of expression, chronicling the curiosity of childhood, urban angst and other societal currents. To each he brought a sharp wit and acute observations of the personal and political relations that defined his readers' lives.
As Feiffer explained to the Chicago Tribune in 2002, his work dealt with "communication and the breakdown thereof, between men and women, parents and children, a government and its citizens, and the individual not dealing so well with authority."
Feiffer won the United States' most prominent awards in journalism and filmmaking, taking home a 1986 Pulitzer Prize for his cartoons and "Munro," an animated short film he wrote, won a 1961 Academy Award. The Library of Congress held a retrospective of his work in 1996.
"My goal is to make people think, to make them feel and, along the way, to make them smile if not laugh," Feiffer told the South Florida Sun Sentinel in 1998. "Humor seems to me one of the best ways of espousing ideas. It gets people to listen with their guard down."
Feiffer was born on Jan. 26, 1929, in the Bronx. From... Read More