Stop the SMELL - Quit Smoking!

With more than one billion people smoking around the world, anti-smoking awareness has been on the rise. One commercial ad from Australia produces a catharsis, enabling and suggesting for the amelioration of our future, to stop smoking. Playing with emotions through the usage of a crying child calls into question how important smoking could be to an individual, if it's worth causing throes onto others for their addiction to a substance made up of 4,000 chemical agents and 60 carcinogens, including tar, ammonia, and lead.

The sender of this message is Quit Victoria, an Australian group created in 1985 that is dedicated to the eradication of pain and suffering caused by tobacco. Due to intense advertisement and shocking tactics, Victoria's smoking rates have fallen and also the ban on smoking in workplaces has taken place. The main message wished to be shown and presented to the world is that smoking effects everyone, not just the individual. Suffering is inevitable for all when a loved one is concerned and the smokers' indifference to such consequeneces for their actions will not be tolerated when even the youth are affected.

The young boy's bravado slowly cracks upon realization that his mother has disappeared into the crowd of pedestrians. The commerical ends with the boy having an anxiety attack, severly searching for his mother, breaking down into tears. When all of this is occuring, the piano accompaniment slowly becomes more pronounced as the commercial progresses, heightening the disquietude and worry experienced by the child.

The language used in this commercial, although diminutive, packs a heavy punch to those being spoken to. The commercial plays on the emotions of parents, especially those with young children but perdure to smoke. Simplistic language, short, blunt questions, drop the cold hard facts and reveal the severity of the truth. Causing the population to question their actions, if their child's potential trauma is worth an addiction that can be easily abdicated.

Regardless of the amount of people that have stopped smoking since the start of Quit Victoria, results are not yet desireable; The brutal effects smoking has on those around us holds no bounds. Despite the good intentions of such commercials provoking self-actualization, people are still offended by the stalwart questions and images used within the commercial, using the human instinct to protect children against those who pursure smoking. The Australian Advertising Standards Bureau received 65+ complaints for the commercial, surprisingly giving it the echelon of 5th most controversial of 2008.


amelioration: improvement
throes: upheaval, tumult, chaos, turmoil
eradication: removal
bravado: a real or pretended show of courage or boldness
disquietude: state of uneasiness
diminutive: small; little; tiny
perdure: to continue or last permanently; endure
abdicated: to give up or renounce
stalwart: firm, steadfast, or uncompromising
echelon: a level of command, authority, or rank