NHS Stop smoking adverts
In 2013 The British national health service (NHS)
launched a new advertising campaign in an attempt to stop people smoking. In
this advert they claimed that they were trying to reach all smokers but particularly
the young who didn't understand the side effects that the addiction risks
creating in the body. This means that the target audience would be people of
both genders from about 1 onwards as that they wanted to reach everyone who may
be in danger of starting to smoke.
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A Shot from The 2013 Advert
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The television advert featured a man standing outside of his house with a cigarette which grows a tutor out of the side of it more whenever he smokes it. This takes place as a voice talks about the dangers of smoking. The use of a man standing outside of his house is quite appropriate in reaching a British audience as that they want to be as general as possible and the scene in the advert is quite average. This means that people will relate to it more and that means that when the disturbing imagery begins the people watching the advert are more likely to project the idea of them getting cancer from a cigarette more on to themselves. As well as this the advertisement was run between December and February which could be because among all of the happy new year adverts a seriously disturbing advertisement is even more likely to stick in the minds of the people watching and leave more of an impression on the people viewing it. This helps people to understand the message of the campaign more. As well as this television advert the campaign also included the use of several posters which kept the same message however I do not feel that they would be as effective as reaching the General audience that the television adverts do as that less people will see them and the goal of this campaign was to make sure that as many people as possible would.
This is one of the posters used for the campaign.
It relates to the TV advert although it uses the imagery of a physical hook to
the addiction that smokers will attain. This advert is again trying to show the
public that smoking is lethal in the clearest way possible. It also contains a pun and a call to action in the tag line "get unhooked". however I do not
feel like it is presented in as clear and concise a way as the television
advert as that it doesn’t actually feature a cigarette in the picture instead
just opting to use smoking in the tagline. This makes me think that people
passing by the poster as they would if it was hanging up would be would most
likely miss the message of the poster. This makes the poster less likely to
appeal to the general audience and stop them from smoking as the campaign was
set up to do.
As that the NHS is a government agency the advertising campaigns they send out do not violate any laws as that they have many lawyers and other legal officials around to oversee the project. The campaign does have some very serious ethical issues centred around it. For example, is it alright that the NHS have used the threat of death to persuade people to stop smoking or is this a clear case of emotional blackmail?
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