Advertisements most positively appraised and engaged by participants*
| Score† | Sponsor ‡ | Executional characteristic § | Youth audience | Theme | Description |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| *Copies of these advertisements are available from the Media Campaign Resource Centre, Office on Smoking and Health, U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. | |||||
| †The advert impact score represents the mean of the summed totals for US, Australian, and British participants for the variables how good, stand out, and discussed. | |||||
| ‡CA, California; MA, Massachusetts; AUS, Australia; SF, San Fransisco; ALF, American Legacy Foundation; AZ, Arizona. | |||||
| §VN, visceral negative; PT, personal testimonial; None, neither of these. | |||||
| 1.90 | CA | VN, PT | No | Health effects | Shows a man who has had a laryngectomy cleaning his stoma. Text introduces man as a cancer patient who has lost his lung and vocal chord from smoking; advert closes over sound of man rasping |
| 1.77 | AUS/MA | VN | No | Health effects | Man lights cigarette on stove; surgeon squeezes fatty deposits from a young smoker’s aorta; tag line: “Every cigarette is doing you damage” |
| 1.74 | CA | PT | No | Secondhand smoke | Older man talks about his wife who always used to tell him not to smoke. Man relates how he didn’t die from his smoking, but his wife did. Text appears: “Second hand smoke kills more than 53 000 people every year” |
| 1.54 | MA | PT | No | Health effects | Ex-model – Janet Sackman – who has lost her vocal chords from smoking, talks in a croaky voice about tobacco advertising and the health effects of smoking |
| 1.51 | SF | None | No | Other | Documentary style images of tobacco farming in a developing nation; voice over describes how food crops have been replaced by tobacco, which is farmed with the use of harmful chemicals. Shot of a young girl in a hospital bed; voice/text states: “It is not just smokers who are dying from tobacco” |
| 1.41 | MA | PT | Yes | Health effects | Young woman – Pam Laffin – who has had a lung removed and has to take medication for the rest of her life says that she “started to smoke to look older, and I am sorry to say – it worked” |
| 1.32 | ALF | None | Yes | Industry manipulation | Outside a major tobacco company, teens pull bodybags out of truck and stack in front of building; Sign: every day 1200 people die from smoking |
| 1.31 | MA | None | No | Secondhand smoke | Black and white image of cigarette burning; reverse image of smoke going into lungs; man talks about the risks of secondhand smoking: “there is a warning on cigarette packs for people who smoke, where do you think they should put the warning for people who breathe?” |
| 1.23 | MA | PT | Yes | Industry manipulation | Teenage girl talks about her addiction to cigarettes. She wishes she could quit |
| 1.11 | AZ | None | Yes | Secondhand smoke | Two young kids and a small dog at a park; one kid is smoking and talking about how smart dogs are, as smoke trails into dog’s face. Dog urinates on cigarette and trots off |