Nothing seems to spark more controversy than a cute kid crying alligator tears, like the ones by little Alex from Australia. Alex is the 4-year old actor who stars in a controversial anti-smoking ad the New York City Department of Health premiered a few weeks back as part of a campaign to help nicotine addicts kick their nasty habit.
NYC's campaign appears two-fold, because it comes on the heels of several states introducing new federal taxes raising the price of cigarettes in hopes of hitting smokers in two places where it hurts most: their hearts, and their bank accounts.
In the ad, little Alex is in a busy airport, suddenly left standing alone by his mother. In seconds, he shows noticeable signs of confusion, followed by the waterworks, and a somber voiceover's cautionary scolding: “This is how your child feels after losing you for a minute. Just imagine if they lost you for life.”
Viewer reactions came almost immediately after the ad aired, and were literally split down the middle in critiques. Half hailed it as very moving and real. It even got a “bravo” from CNBC personality Donny Deutsch during an interview with “Today Show” anchor Matt Lauer.
But the focus seemed more fixed on people who were upset over the ad. They claimed that Alex couldn't possibly be “just acting,” because the emotion shown was so raw. Questions poured in over whether ad producers took it too far to get their message across. The producers that coached Alex for the ad, originally shot in Australia, denied these claims in a later interview on “Today.”
Then the story turned into a debate about what the production company did wrong in conveying their anti-smoking message, and brushed aside was the fact that the ad got millions of viewers watching and talking about the potential dangers of smoking. While the truth of it probably hit close to home for some, one can't deny that sort of angle could inspire some people to quit smoking, or save a life.
That is the goal of the campaign after all, but that message was lost in the skewed TV reports.
Was it just a scenario of people seizing an opportunity to dodge responsibility by diverting attention to an advertising company's mishandling of child labor so they wouldn't have to admit their lethal habits are deadly, and could hurt others if they were to die?
This latest ad follows the recent trend of using hard-hitting scare tactics to try to curb tobacco use in the U.S. While their graphic content and acting might have raised awareness to the dangers of smoking, their strategy, studies have found, isn't the magic bullet makers had hoped would get people to quit smoking.
Ironically, the big tobacco companies themselves sponsor many anti- smoking ads. These ads, a 2007 American Journal of Public Health study found, fell way short of expectation in making people, teens in particular, quit smoking. Data failed to show correlation between the frequency of the industry's anti-smoking ads and actual or intended smoking by a survey of about 100,000 teens, ages 12-17 from 1999 to 2002.
Scare tactics can be effective motivators, but anti-smoking messages shouldn't solely seek to manipulate people's emotions and have their message be lost in the process.
If the scare tactics are so high in shock value they can't even get people to focus on their point, then the industry needs to quit wasting millions of dollars on ineffective campaigns and change its strategy. A strategy that will render more promising results.
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