“I smoke when I get bored” said the young boy as the commercial began. Many people can be unaware of second hand smoke, but viewers observing this commercial can get an insight of what effects it have on children. They are affected by second hand smoke that come from adults and the commercial shows this through a child’s perspective. While looking at the ad, viewers can see that it targets the people’s desire to protect kids from harmful material; such as smoke and depression. I think this ad is brilliant. Further analysis will explain my reasoning with this.
The overview of the ad depicts a typical child, of a smoker, and the type of ways each child is considered smoking from second hand. That’s where the character element comes into effect. “I smoke while I’m watching cartoons”, another child followed up in the commercial. That statement gives the viewers a visual of how the kid is breathing in smoke from their parents’ cigarette, while the kid is watching TV. Throughout the ad, is a series of kids making comments about how they are considered smoking through second hand smoke from the adults around them.
Each child looks depressed and as if they were about to collapse of exhaustions of some sort. Analysis shows that these sarcastic comments made by children act as eye openers for older people that have control over their smoking activities.
The sarcasm, in other word; dialect, in the ad helps the listeners focus more on what the child is saying in order to get the ad’s point across. This element is best used in this ad because people watching will be interesting to see if kids are really smoking. Anybody would know that the kids in the ad are not willingly smoking during their everyday lives. The commercial is showing that children are inhaling smoke, but cannot stop because they’re around their smoking parents’ majority of the time. This plays into the depression mood shown in the ad.
The sadness on their faces helps illustrate this idea as they talk about their daily intake of smoke as well. “We smoke in the car on our way to school,” said by two kids depressingly, sitting in the car. Statements like these in the ad play on parents’ thoughts that probably was not thinking about until watching the commercial.
Continuing on, the setting of the ad is dry and gloomy. Elements like these are supporting the statement the ad wants you to believe. There isn’t any real daylight shown in the commercial. This is another visual that stating that smoking is nothing to be happy about. The ad wants people to believe that smoking ruins the day and children’s moods. First looking at the commercial a person would think ‘why is everything so sad?’
And then would come to realize that maybe I shouldn’t smoke if my day is going to be like this. I think that visual effect was very manipulative. It plays on people’s desire to want to have a good, stress free day. It’s ironic, however, because the main purpose for someone to smoke is to relive stress. The creators of this ad did a good job with redirecting peoples’ thought patterns for them to believe what they wanted viewers to believe.
As the commercial comes to a close, the viewers are introduced to facts across the screen that talks about the statistics in second hand smoke with kids. These facts do well as manipulating viewers’ thoughts because facts are better than opinions. If it was just a simple person giving their opinion, then viewers would not take interest as much as facts presented to them in black and white. “If you smoke around children from birth to age 5, they would have inhaled about 200 packs.” These facts give better understanding the dangers in smoking around kids.
In conclusion, this ad does well with making parents feel a sense of guiltiness. I mean felt guilty watching it and I don’t smoke, nor do I have kids. After watching the commercial, many smokers would feel like they should change up their habits a little more. This commercial also targets people who have intentions of smoking as well.
This can be determined by the way all the information is given to the viewer’s very depressingly. The ad reveals a telephone number to help stop their smoking activities. This method is very clever because a human mindset is programmed to redeem their selves once they make mistakes. So with Quit Line, viewers can put forth efforts to stop smoking. All in all, this commercial is brilliant. It gives great examples of secondhand smoke while playing with the mind of smokers using kids, and presents a way to stop the issue. Excellent!
