Whereupon the French Try to Make a Point

I love to smoke. Cigarettes are the best friend I've ever had. Whether you smoke or not, they're your friend too, since tobacco has likely prevented my decapitating you. I'm not, you can safely assume, not a particularly friendly man.

Of course, smoking isn't good for you, but nothing fun ever is. But no one has suggested that cigarettes are chock full of Vitamin C in a number of years now. There simply isn't a tobacco company that says that their product will make you tall and handsome like me. I just got lucky.

That's what makes anti-smoking advertising campaigns stupid. They assume that you do think that smoking is going to turn you into a Golden God, which is nonsense. Also, even the best advertising in the world will not make you engage in behaviours that you're not already inclined to engage in. That naturally includes quitting smoking.

Anti-smoking campaigns can, however, go for balls-level shock level, which will get them all sorts of attention from the Goddamned Liberal Media. And in the end, that's good enough for them.

The French, being the French, have decided to kick things up a notch.

A provocative anti-smoking ad campaign featuring teens in a subservient sexual position has sparked a storm of controversy in France, with the country's family minister calling Wednesday for the advertisements to be banned.

The ad, sponsored by the Association for Nonsmokers' Rights, features a teenage boy who could be construed to be performing oral sex on a man in a suit, except the teen has a cigarette in his mouth. A caption reads, “Smoking means being a slave to tobacco.” There are two other ads in the same vein, one featuring an adolescent girl.

The leader of the organization behind the campaign acknowledged the ads were meant to shock and said such provocative campaigns were the only way to reach young people.

“Traditional advertisements targeting teens don't affect them. Talking about issues of health, illness or even death, they don't get it,” the group's director, Remi Parola, told The Associated Press in an interview. “However, when we talk about submission and dependence, they listen.”

Mr. Parola insisted the ads – developed pro bono by the BDDP & Fils advertising agency – were not really about sex at all.

“The visuals have a sexual connotation, that I can't deny, but it's really a way to start a discussion with young people to get them to understand the dangers of smoking.”

I'm something of an expert on sexual connotations, and I'm here to tell you that these ads have a pretty strong one.

It has been my experience that if someone is on their knees in front of you and looking up, there's a better than even chance that you're going to be fellated in the immediate future. Having your hand on their heads makes that even more certain. Don't ask me how I know that, just know that I do. Also know that it's awfully fucking sexy when someone is making eye contact whilst swallowing my hog. Just sayin'.

Here's another thing about the advertising industry: They not infrequently make ads that they know don't work, but will win the agency a shitload of awards from its peers. If you see a commercial seven or eight times a day for nine months and still don't know what product is being sold, that's what's happening. And it happens a lot more than you would think.

Advertising is one of the few industries where there's no shame in getting fired every two years. Indeed, that's expected. If a big client switches agencies, the agency has to fire a bunch of people. Everybody knows that.

Everybody also knows that advertising is littered with frustrated artists. So if you show up at a new agency with an arty ad that won a lot of awards on your resume, you're virtually guaranteed a job regardless of whether that ad did what it was actually supposed to.

And there are few things as arty to the French as underaged teens being depicted sucking the cocks of older men in business suits. If you don't believe me, ask Roman Polanski.

I'm not exactly sure what this ad is supposed to accomplish and I know that it almost certainly won't accomplish it. But I can guarantee you that whoever had the idea is never going to have trouble finding a job.


Update: Thanks to the always amazing dslak ....



New Anti-Smoking Ads Warn Teens 'It's Gay To Smoke'

And my personal favorite ...



The only thing I love more than anti-smoking ads is smoking itself. Oh, and anal.