We all know smoking causes cancer. We all know smoking causes emphysema. We all know smoking increases your chance of having a stroke, seriously harms your unborn child and is just generally a really terrible idea.
And yet… there are still smokers. And a whole lot of them.
Normally fear and common sense are the devices we use to persuade people to quit smoking but a new Queensland campaign is tapping into a different emotion: vanity.
The campaign, targeted at young female smokers, is called ‘Your Future Is Not Pretty’. It focuses on the damage smoking can do to your appearance, from accelerating the ageing process, right through to staining your teeth and fingernails.
To promote the campaign, they’ve gone to town with Photoshop, showing us what would happen to former Miss Universe contestant Rachel Finch in a few years if she took up smoking:
Eech.
Sure, there’s more to life than looking young and gorgeous but sometimes people are terrible at making long-term decisions. So telling young women that smoking will make them stinky and ugly now could well be a better incentive to quit than telling them smoking will make them sick later.
A similar advertisement that played on male vanity a few years ago:
Here are a few more of the skin-deep effects of smoking – from the ‘Your Future Is Not Pretty’ flyer:
- Chemicals in tobacco smoke damage the fibres in the skin which leads to wrinkles, sagging of the eye-lids, bags under the eyes and premature aging on the face and other parts of the body, including breast sagging.
- Smoking causes a dull yellow-grey complexion.
- Chemicals in cigarette smoke break-down hair cells which lead to hair damage.
- Halitosis (bad breath) stained teeth and gums are perhaps the most obvious effects of smoking. It can also result in swollen gums and may cause teeth to fall out.
Want more proof? Check out these sets of identical twins. In each pair, one is a smoker and one is not.
Do you think playing to people’s vanity could help them quit smoking?
Top Comments
It may work for some young women. The threat of impotence may work for some young men. The recent campaign showing parents the impact their diagnosis would have on their children may work for some parents. There will never be any approach that works for everyone- niche marketing is always going to be the way to go.
I gave up smoking at the age of 18 when I started dating my now husband. Our mums were the exact same age and his mother looked much older than my mother and the only difference was she was a smoker. I think this sort of advertising will work with a lot of young women. Although a real life example like I had would be much more effect than a make under IMO.