wr3n:
11th & Hennepin
Billboard sponsored by ClearWay Minnesota. View close-up on Flickr.
I do not understand this billboard. As someone who has been an on-and-off smoker for about five years, all this makes me think is “oooh, cigarettes! One of those would be nice. Is that model supposed to be pretty? Is he in jail for smoking? That would be interesting.”
Those Truth campaigns never worked for me either. They were all about how we might die (duhhh, we all know that’s the point) or how we look stupid when we’re smoking, which is an absolute lie.
The appeal of smoking is that it’s still cool, aesthetically, and the cigarette feels nice in my hand, and I love how it feels when I inhale and exhale. The other appeal of smoking is that if I smoke, I get to take a break from my job, which also feels like jail as much as addiction does. This PSA appeals to all of those things.
What actually makes me hate smoking is the way it makes me feel like absolute shit, it smells bad, and how corporate tobacco culture is the one corporate culture we can all agree is totally fucked up. So maybe, public awareness campaigners, maybe you should go for that.
Nice picture, anyway.
