Can’t buy me love

Written By: - Date published: 9:09 am, August 24th, 2012 - 16 comments
Categories: health, spin - Tags:

The Cancer-mongers’ ad campaign is complete crap. Ineffectual ads that won’t get anyone on side. Doesn’t matter though. They’re not aiming to convince you with the ads themselves. The actual aim’s to put a few hundred thousand dollars in media outlets’ pockets with the promise of more for favourable coverage. The Herald made it a bit blatant though – running a fawning editorial the day after the first full-page ad.

Times must really be tight when $60,000 for a full-page ad gets you an editorial on the side. Not long ago, you would have to run a month’s worth of ads to get that kind of love from Granny.

In related news – looks like Liquor King ought to have bought some more ads this week.

Btw, you know what I reckon the cigarette shills should do for an ad campaign?

A picture of themselves. And text like “Hi, I’m Chris Priestley. I work for a company that I know sells an addictive product that kills people. I do it because they pay me lots of money. Please try our addictive deathsticks so that I can make more money off your slow and gruesome death. No, I don’t smoke myself – gross – but I want you to smoke. What do you mean sociopathic?”

At least you could respect their honesty.

16 comments on “Can’t buy me love ”

  1. redfred 1

    It is so “Thank You For Smoking” its laughable

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4HC3xwlfcFM

    • insider 1.1

      TYFS was so plausible it makes everything else look like parody. Basically it stole all the best lines.

  2. blue leopard 2

    What is the advantage of conveying that ads “won’t get anyone on side”?

    I consider it foolhardy to assume that the ads won’t work when they are being conducted by a company with enough money to have investigated whether such an approach will work or not.

    You might be right in with regard to smoking, people are now becoming aware that smoking isn’t healthy due to the HUGE AMOUNT OF ADS regarding the subject.

    And thus I consider that conveying this thought “they won’t work” may not be a helpful meme to convey.

    I suspect that the best way to protect oneself from being affected by moving-picture-and-sounds-propaganda is to be alert to the fact that they CAN work on one , in this way one can choose to view them “actively” i.e. looking at the choice of pictures, words and sounds and consider how such choices might “work” on people or conversely one can choose to turn off the sound and not view them at all .

    I’m basing this comment on the view that despite my doubts, there must be some effectiveness in advertisements, given that “successful” companies continue to spend a small fortune on them.

    I consider that viewing advertisements as though they won’t work is more likely to lead one’s mind to be in the type of naively open frame which (I would guess) makes one more vulnerable to their propaganda working!!

  3. Tracey 3

    Of course ADs work, thats why billions are spent ont hem every year…

    • mike e 3.1

      They say they should own what they have created!
      They have created a market for an highly addictive substance that kills 4,700 Kiwis every year!
      The cigarette companies should own the untimely departure of its customers.Marketing untimely death to youth so it looks like some dream or escape so they can keep market share!
      I don’t buy why they are even aloud to advertise,
      The tale-ban are more hated yet they have only killed a few our people.

  4. bad12 4

    Excuse me buddy, cough, cough, can you spare me a light…

  5. shorts 5

    speaking as a smoker I care not for the packaging… only the contents

    these ads might get editorials but the public stopped thinking smoking was anything but unhealthy so long ago I question the anti smoking ad spend by our health officials logic, waste of public money i reckon – we all know smoking is unhealthy….

    what the young (peer prone) need is life choices that leave smoking in the dust… you know jobs… the ability to do more than dream and puff whilst earning minimal wage (if they’re lucky) with a brighter (real) future before them

    people like myself can only help ourselves (older smokers), though I’m not opposed to the thought that my future in this country is anything other than a very real fear of possible pending unemployment and thus being on the scrapheap for possibly the rest of my days

  6. blue leopard 6

    I agree with Shorts, positive alternatives are required, yet still consider that the intended propoganda campaign by these tobacco companies is likely to have a more negative effect than this article is conveying.

    ….and from what the big tobacco companies have said to date, my guess is that the ads are going to be about “freedom”, “freedom of choice” and “freedom of the individual” which is going to be excellent for the non-thinking, screwed up laissez-faire meme to be spread far and wide.

  7. insider 7

    “Chris Priestly”.. snigger

  8. tracey 8

    IF packaging makes no difference, the tobacco companies wouldnt waste millions trying to keep it.

  9. xy 9

    Meanwhile in Christchurch, CERA is going to force people to sell their land to the government, who will then onsell it to other property developers.

    http://www.stuff.co.nz/the-press/business/7538539/Chaos-fears-in-buy-up-of-CBD-land

  10. bad12 10

    Cancer Mongers, probably more auspices to tie on another label, Heart Disease Monger’s perhaps, admittedly it doesn’t quite roll off of the tongue like the former although it’s far easier to manipulate the statistics around Heart disease and Smoking,

    The Poms bless their dear old English hearts have just released a new study which unsurprisingly tells us one hell of a lot of nothing new,

    http://www.ic.nhs.uk/news-and-events/news/about-1260-hospital-admissions-a-day-due-to-smoking-new-figures-show

    Shock Horror, 11% of admissions to cancer wards a year in UK hospitals are so ‘They’ say as a result of smoking,

    Your all sufficiently HORRIFIED RIGHT, said another way tho you lot out there breathing straight atmosphere better start PANICKING big-time coz 89% of admissions to cancer wards in UK hospitals every year are as a result of you lot breathing straight air,

    What’s more us lot of cancer-stick suckers demand that you lot STOP SUCKING straight air as it’s obviously giving you all cancer and your clogging up the cancer wards which seeing as us smokers pay 4, yes four times the rate of tax to fund those cancer wards than what you air-suckers do it’s outrageously unfair…

    • fatty 10.1

      True, we need to put smoking in perspective, its getting a bit tiresome. More focus needs to be given to other health issues such as diet, exercise and drinking.
      Ironically, the less we smoke, the fatter we’ll get, and we are the third fattest country on earth.
      People now are so offended by smokers that its ridiculous…if you are outside and a bit of smoke wafts your way, then get over it.
      I’d be keen for plain packaging if that was extended to alcohol and junk food.
      Is there really much of a difference between fat people and smokers? They are both more likely to die early. The only difference I can see is that smokers don’t take up 3/4 of a bus seat. I’d rather sit next to a smoker.

  11. Olwyn 11

    Big tobacco and big anti-tobacco are two sides of the same coin. NGO’s are run along corporate lines, and like other corporates, lobby governments and like to have results to crow about. What I find disconcerting is that social policy, in the corporate universe, is all about controlling people, all “for their own good.” Not housing them. Not paying them living wages. Not freeing them from persecution, unless that task coincides with some corporate gain or other.

    If the same model continues, it will probably take a long time to stamp out smoking, given there are a large number of countries, many of whose citizens do not yet give a hoot. But if they manage to even partially achieve their aims, the structure is there to turn to other results-driven “improvements” of the human species. That do not include housing, living wages, etc, etc.

    Furthermore, many educated liberals have readily bought into this schema. Back in the seventies and eighties, when people rallied for homosexual law reform, they were challenging “the system” to change a cruel world view, accompanied by draconian laws. Somehow or other “the system” has since morphed into poor people who need to be guided and controlled by their betters. Yes, I know this post is about big tobacco, but on a practical level it is also about controlling people. And, yes, big tobacco controls people too, but at least they are complicit in it.

  12. Draco T Bastard 12

    This comes under my Philosophy of Permissions which is, simply stated, Nobody has the right to affect anyone else in any way without that persons permission. What’s happening is that the implied permission of the last few decades that the tobacco industry has had is now being withdrawn. They can still make and sell the product but they’ve had their ability to affect people limited even more.

    Everybody’s personal rights trumps an industries property rights.

  13. Foreign Waka 13

    Another day, another con. Not surprised really. Old adage this, blame one group for everything – I mean everything. Has been done before, worked brilliantly. Just try not to miss the handbrake this time.
    There are so many myths out there that the essential part gets quietly missed. If a law gets changed, it gets changed not just for one thing but for all things. Next in line – fast food? Alcoholic beverages? Orwell anyone?

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