Hard hitting anti-smoking ads target fashion magazines
Purpose of ads to show fate that befalls female smokers
Toronto Star (Tuesday, June 11, 2002)Author: Stuart Elliott / Special to the Star

  The U.S. advertising effort to "un-sell" smoking is for the first time aiming its messages at adult women in a campaign notable for its unflinchingly frank depiction of the damage cigarettes can do.

The campaign, with a budget estimated at $5.2 million (U.S.), started to appear in May and will run in June issues of two dozen weekly and monthly publications ranging from Allure and Good Housekeeping to Entertainment Weekly and Jane. One title on the media schedule, Lucky, is ironic under the circumstances because the goal of the campaign, by Arnold Worldwide in Boston, is to demonstrate the unfortunate fates that can befall female smokers.

The hard-hitting campaign, on behalf of the American Legacy Foundation, exemplifies the work being done in the realm of discovering whether advertising can effectively change behaviours other than shopping habits or buying patterns. The debate over the efficacy of those campaigns has been heated and will undoubtedly intensify as more such ads appear.  . .

This new campaign recognizes that older women would be receptive to a no-nonsense, realistic appeal centred on the consequences of smoking, which are displayed through graphic, black-and-white photographs of women who are suffering or dying from diseases related to smoking such as cancer and emphysema. Alongside the photos, by the renowned fashion photographer Richard Avedon, are brief letters written by the women to their children and husbands as well as to the tobacco companies.