Radio Australia Today Editorial

How to Stop Smoking, and How Anti-Smoking Campaigns Get It Wrong

21 November 2008

Yesterday on the Breakfast Club we spoke to Martin Lindstrom, an advertising man, who makes the extraordinary statement that most big ad campaigns are failures.

He cites the Pepsi taste test campaign, where tasters are given two colas (Coke and Pepsi) with their labels hidden, and are asked to choose which one they prefer. According to Pepsi, most tasters choose thie product.

But the interesting thing is that once these pepsi-preferrers go away from the taste test, they go back to drinking Coke, Linstrom says the reason for this is the more effective advertising by the Coke people in Atlanta.

How extraordinary. People are choosing to listen to ads to make their choices, rather than trust their own taste.

There’s another side to this. Lindstrom says that the psyche of a product can be so in-grained that the mention of a product, or type of product can elicit a ‘Pavlov’s Dog’ response, so that people start to crave the product, like hoe the dogs would salivate when pavlov rang his bell. This means that by telling you about the Pepsi-Coke taste test, I could well have made you crave a can of cola.

More important than any of this is the effect that advertising has on people who smoke.

Here in Australia we have some pretty tough anti-smoking campaigns. On television there are ads that show people in hospital beds with oxygen masks fitted to their faces, while their young children and partners stand around the bed and are crying. On the cigarette packets themselves, the Australian authorities ddidtate that there should be photos of dissected lungs, amutated toes and rotted, yellowing teeth.

You would think that this would make smokers think twice about taking theire next puff.

No, says Lindstrom. In fact these images make people smoke more.

How, we asked?

He says the simple visual image on TV of people smoking brings in those ol’ dogs of Pavlov again. The smokers would see that image and think, on a simple level, that “Oh yeah, I’d love a ciggie”.

It seems cravings are an impulse that will win out against self-fear every time.

I did come out of the interview feeling pretty chuffed though. I suggested to Lindstrom that what we should do is an advertsiing campaign aimed at pretty young things who think smoking is glamorous. What we should do is run ads that say that smoking causes cellulite (the lumpy fat that can affect the thighs of the female of the species). Yes, he said, you would do well in adverting.

Its still pretty sad though that a distate for a poor self-image is stronger than a distate for dying.

– Phil