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Stealth Cigarette Commercial
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—The Capitol Steps, "Smokémon"
Since the early 1970s, tobacco products could not be advertised on television in the United States. The tobacco companies didn't fight this, since they knew if they went to Congress, there was a good chance they'd lose their print ads as well.
This all changed as the result of a class-action lawsuit against Phillip Morris, which now calls itself Altria. As part of their settlement, the tobacco companies agreed to fund anti-smoking public service announcements.
So, now they get to advertise on TV.
No, really.
Sit down and watch one of these commercials. Now, think back about what you've learned. The classic adage of advertising is, "There is no such thing as bad press," so talking about smoking on television — even in a pejorative context — helps their cause. It's about as close to a Xanatos Gambit as you're likely to get in modern advertising.
But more than that, the anti-smoking PSAs produced by tobacco companies are always a little backhanded. The textual message — don't smoke — is coupled with a very different subtext. (And it doesn't help that the commercials are often so annoying, they make one want to light up a cigarette merely out of ''spite''.) Studies have actually backed this up, linking exposure to "anti"-smoking PSAs to higher cigarette use. (And now, there's a series of anti-smoking commercials that no longer talk about the health risks and entirely talk about how bad the tobacco companies are... of course, the problem with this is that no one really thought tobacco companies were that much of a moral standard-bearer beforehand, and the most common reaction to the revelation of their schemes is to marvel at the level of Magnificent Bastard schemes they've pulled off.)
A kind of Broken Aesop. See also Smoking Is Cool.
Examples:
- Stealth PSA motto: "Tobacco is wacko — if you're a teen."
Subtext: "Smoking separates the adults from the mere teenagers."
- This is especially bad, because teenagers spend so much effort trying to be perceived as adults - that's the whole point of many of them taking up smoking!
- Actual PSA dialog:
Voiceover Guy: Did you smoke?
Teen: Yeah.
VO Guy: Why?
Teen: I wanted to be cool.
VO Guy: Why'd you quit?
Teen: I decided I didn't need all that.
Text: "Be your own person: don't smoke."
Subtext: "... unless you want to look cool."
- PSA: "Tobacco companies fund free concerts and give out branded merchandise at these concerts as a stealthy way to advertise their products, playing you for a fool!"
Subtext: "You get a free concert and lots of cool swag, and all you have to do is cope with our stealthy advertisements!"
- Benson & Hedges pulled its funding for the Symphony of Fire and the Toronto International Film Festival in 2000 when new advertising regulations came into effect. The subtext was that they were only funding them to get their logo displayed, not to support culture.
- PSA: "There is no safe cigarette. Go to our Web site and read more about the health risks of smoking."
Subtext: "Hey, look what good corporate citizens we are! And go to our Web site!"
- Outside TV, note the "If you're thinking about quitting smoking..." brochures sometimes attached to cigarette packages. Inside is information on the health benefits of quitting — information that might reinforce your decision to quit. Of course, as long as the pack is already open...
- There's one in the Netherlands, Canada and the United Kingdom which shows an attractive woman smoking, and then says "Lose The Smoke Keep The Fire". Problem is she still looks sexy smoking, and kinda dorky afterwards. Weirdly, it's run by Nicotinell Gum, which has nothing to gain by encouraging people to keep smoking, except for a long-term plan. Here it is.
- However, this trope is notably nonexistent in Australia, where it is the government that makes the commercials. These ads feature things such as showing the nasty gross things that happen to smokers bodies, like ruptured veins in the eye, tar buildup in the lungs and a number of them use actual (probably similar animal parts, as they are too healthy to be wasted if they were human) parts when demonstrating this. And recently cigarette packs are required by law to have a large picture on them depicting the nasty effects of smoking on them, in addition to the text warnings.
- Similar labels are seen in Canada on smokes, leading to this troper bemusedly overhearing two women complaining about the pictures on their cigarette packages and that it was almost enough to turn you off the product. I restrained myself from whacking them over the heads with a cluestick.
- One stand-up comedian who went to Canada comments on this. He says he used to have a favorite brand of cigarette. Now he selects them with "Don't give me the lungs, don't...Don't give me the liver, I don't want to see...the limp penis, I'll take the limp penis!"
- This was predicted long before by comedian Denis Leary, who joked in his "No Cure For Cancer" show about "making the warning label the actual label" and selling cigarettes that "come in a black pack with a big ol' skull and crossbones on the front, called TUMORS" and asserts that smokers will still want them.
- There was a similar ad series in the United Kingdom (again, funded by the Government) which showed, among other things, smokers literally coughing up their ORGANS. The current series likens smoking to blowing on a party hooter for no particular reason. Shockingly, it seems far less effective to this troper.
- Warnings in Greece I saw read, "Smoking will kill you."
- In Germany, every pack of cigs has to have a big warning label like "Smoking may kill you" and such. this troper read a comic where a man buys a pack with a warning about impotence. He asks the saleswoman for a different one; she gives him a pack that warns pregnant women. Which is OK for him.
- Done long ago by a Mister Bill Hicks.
- During an interview on The Daily Show, author David Sedaris mentioned that in Japan, there are street signs that appear to imply that walking around with a lit cigarette in your hand can blind children.
- For what it's worth, this is true (That Japanese PS As are centered around this. As to whether a lit cigarette is liable to blind children rather depends on the height of your children, your height, how you hold your giant cigarette, and, according to this picture, whether or not you are the player character of Berzerk. And possibly the presence of a helicopter.)
- This (Australian) troper used to work at a convenience store and would rearrange all the cigarette packets to have the worst picture (a rather graphic shot of someone with mouth cancer) displayed prominently. Every customer that night wanted to swap packets for something else, except the next one lined up was also mouth cancer. . . and the next one.
- This commercial. Note that the part about arsenic and laying you out seems to be edited out for time.
- This Disney cartoon from the 1950s that basically implies that smoking is very calming and helps a person through tough times, and if you try to quit, you'll become a desparate lunatic. Notice that this was at a time where smoking was not considered harmful.
- That cartoon is just so broken on so many levels it truly boggles this troper's mind.
- Actually, this seems like a subversion of the trope: the narrator describes smoking in a sympathetic way, but Goofy shows what results from smoking (and addiction). The moral, after all, is "give the smoker enough rope, and he'll hang onto his habit."
- On a similar note, there was a series of PSAs aired by The BBC in 2007 warning against the dangers of excessive drinking, by showing people being ostracized and called names after getting massively drunk. It accidentally backfired: little did they knew, that telling your friends all the crazy antics you did while drunk makes you look so cool...
Text: "Don't make a jackass of yourself; drink moderately".
Subtext: "...unless you want to miss all the fun!".
- Poster ads funded by alcohol companies in Ireland do this too. They're fill in the blanks-style ads, for example: "I will overcome my ______ but forever succumb to my ______" with the two words to fit in being "inhibitions" and "hangovers." That's the worst one, but all of them manage to imply that, either way, someone is going to get completely trashed. Having a good time without drinking at all isn't really given as an option.
- Parodied on the install screen of Metal Gear Solid 4. We see a video of Snake, in bliss, orgasmically chaining cigarette after cigarette, occasionally playing with the smoke a little, while text comes up on screen talking about how cigarettes damage your health and the health of others around you, and how you should never start.
- Philip Morris has recently released a brochure urging parents to discuss all tobacco products with their kids: not just normal cigarettes, but also cigars, pipes, smokeless tobacco, Indian cigarettes, and clove cigarettes. At least four of these other product types are types Philip Morris does not make.
- The most recent set of anti-smoking PSAs involve a brief (and rather quiet) mention of some evil facet of the tobacco company, followed by an elaborate song and dance about how they must have been mistaken. At the end of the song, they very quickly realize that their justification makes no sense. The part of the commercial that inevitably stays with you is the big song and dance that tobacco companies love you. Note also that the last bit happens so quickly at the very end that it's often cut off by local stations trying to return to the show on time.
- This troper saw a large ad on the street that featured the slogan "Smoking will kill you slowly". Under it, someone helpfully tagged the subtext ("We're not in a hurry").
- Newport's print ads just feature some random scene of young adults having fun with the phrase "Newport pleasure!" slapped on. There aren't actually any cigarettes shown in the scene. It's really bizarre.
- John Waters filmed a pre-movie spot for an art house theater where he tells the patrons that there is no smoking allowed in the theater... while smoking a cigarette and asking the audience if they wished they had one. Then he tells them to smoke anyway, since it gives the ushers something to do.
- An interesting ad from the 1970s when there were no real restrictions didn't even show the product. Camel cigarettes had a slogan "I'd walk a mile for a Camel". They had one where it showed a man standing next to a bottle of pickles and an empty 1/2 gallon box of ice cream, with the tag line "Start Walking." Here, it wasn't presumed that he'd have to walk a mile for his cigarettes, but that he'd have to walk a mile so he could get his pregant (presumably) wife ice cream for her stereotypical pickles and ice cream.
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