Have you ever seen the ads on TV that just make you feel awful about smoking, or feel even worse for others who smoke? One that I remember portrayed many thousands of people standing in the streets of New York — there was a stunning amount of people in the crowd. The ad then went on to explain that this was the number of people who die from smoking-related illnesses in just a month or two.
My first reaction was to wonder how other people felt. Was there a public backlash? Did smokers just reject the ads, or did it help change their lives? Well, it turns out the CDC has collected that proves the ads do work.
CDC proves that graphic, troubling smoking ads work – tripling the hits to the US Stop Smoking website since they started running. — Click to Tweet.
How Do People React?
It’s actually been shown that these ads are incredibly effective at generating concerned smokers.
Recently, one particular ad was created about a woman whose throat cancer “caused her to lose her teeth, hair, and larynx, and resulted in a hole in her throat.” It shows her getting dressed in the morning, first putting in her fake teeth, then adding a wig, and lastly plugging the hole in her throat. The imagery is troubling, and frankly disgusting.
Because the story in the ad was striking and personal, smokers are able to connect the consequences of smoking with their own lives.
Eric Asche, a man who works for the anti-smoking group Legacy and who consulted the CDC on the ads, says that they “made the danger accessible and realistic,” and he thinks that’s why they worked. I think he’s right.
Smoking By The Numbers
The total ad campaign, which ran for 12 weeks in the spring and early summer of 2012, cost the CDC $54 million. But the ads also generated 192,000 extra calls to 800-QUIT-NOW, the national toll-free quitline, which is more than double the usual volume. They also generated 417,000 new visitors to smokefree.gov, which is more than triple the website’s previous traffic.
While the $54 million that was spent on the CDC’s ad campaign may seem like a lot, it’s a “mere pittance” against the $10 billion that the smoking industry spends promoting its products. Hopefully, though, it will be enough to stem the tide of new smokers, as well as turn around a few old ones.
We specialize in providing our over 1,000,000 customers with relevant product and condition information created by our professional editorial staff which includes our team of medical writers, medical practitioners, and health educators. eDrugStore.com Staff on Facebook