Featured in last week’s "The Best Work You May Never See" gallery was the Minnesota Partnership for Action Against Tobacco’s "Dinner Party," directed by Tom De Cerchio of Incubator Films, West Hollywood, for Clarity Coverdale Fury, Minneapolis.
The spot, which humorously yet effectively depicts the addictive power of smoking, came on the heels of a Clarity Coverdale Fury-conceived PSA which cleverly took tobacco companies to task for the fact that smoking in PG-13 movies is up 50 percent. Entitled "Credits," the spot debuted in Minnesota during the Academy Awards telecast (SHOOT, 4/4, p. 4).
Indeed anti-smoking ads have consistently made the pages of SHOOT over the years, particularly our "The Best Work You May Never See" gallery. Anti-smoking spots from Florida, Minnesota, Massachusetts, Mississippi, Arizona and California have scored multiple times in our rundown of creatively worthwhile fare that might not be seen in most of the country.
But, thankfully, this work is getting watched—and noticed by the right people—in those and other states. State health departments have generally proven to be good clients, empowering ad agencies to bring their creative prowess to bear in order to positively influence youngsters who are being targeted by Big Tobacco. These efforts have also successfully reached adult smokers, helping many of them to at least curtail their tobacco use, and others to quit smoking altogether.
Much of the anti-smoking work in California has been funded by tax dollars collected under the state’s Proposition 99, which was passed in 1988. Prop 99 imposed a tax of 25 cents on each pack of cigarettes sold in California, with some of those funds going toward PSAs. As chronicled in SHOOT, the California campaign has enjoyed considerable success. For example, since the campaign’s inception, adult smoking in the state has declined nearly one-third, to 18 percent. On average nationwide, about 25 percent of adults smoke. Similarly, the campaign has had a hand in raising awareness among youngsters and teens as to how tobacco companies try to manipulate them into habit-forming behavior.
But now R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Co. and Lorillard Tobacco Co. have filed a lawsuit against California to stop state-sponsored ads that the cigarette makers contend "exceed the state’s authority and are intended to vilify the tobacco industry." The suit seeks an injunction to halt some of California’s advertising financed by tax dollars from Prop. 99. The tobacco industry claims that "many of the state’s ads misuse taxpayer funds, violate the companies’ constitutional rights and have a prejudicial effect on potential jurors in lawsuits related to smoking." The litigation argues that vilifying tobacco companies is out of bounds legally in that the ads are only supposed to provide tobacco-related health education.
If the plaintiffs were to win this lawsuit, it would have a potentially chilling effect on the successful ad work being done in numerous states. And clearly, part of anti-smoking education is to make the public—particularly the youth market—aware of tobacco company manipulation designed to form addictions that ruin and take lives.
I recall the comments of Paul Keye, creative director of Paul Keye & Associates, Culver City, Calif., upon the debut of his ad shop’s animated spot "Crocodile Tears," for the California Department of Health Services a couple of years ago. In the ad, which was directed by Bob Kurtz of Kurtz & Friends, Burbank, Calif., a smug cartoon crocodile insists he has changed for the better by doing community service. But when he’s asked why he is still selling cigarettes, the crocodile loses his cool, attacks the camera and stomps off screen.
Of the tobacco companies, Keye said, "They’re spending hundreds of millions of dollars to tell us how wonderful they are. We just want to give it some perspective. The thing about working on anti-tobacco advertising is that you never have to spend time on old grievances. [The tobacco industry is] always doing something reprehensible."
