Pure genius! Getting children to ask smokers for a light is a brilliant way to sell the anti-smoking message:
It has been labelled “heartbreaking” and one of the most effective anti-smoking advertisements ever.
The new public service announcement from Thailand shows two small children approaching adults who are smoking and asking them for a light.
Not one of the adults shown in the ad gives the children what they ask for.
Instead the adults — who have no idea they are being set up — begin giving the children earnest lectures on why smoking is so bad for them.
“If you smoke you die faster,” one man tells a little boy.
“Don’t you want to live and play?”
“When you smoke you suffer from lung cancer, emphysema and strokes,” another says.
The children then reveal their trump card, a brochure they hand the adults which reads: “You worry about me. But why not about yourself?”
The video, produced by the agency Ogilvy Thailand on behalf of the Thai Health Promotion Foundation, was uploaded to YouTube a week ago and has since gone viral, attracting more than 350,000 views.
The foundation has reported a 40 percent increase in the number of calls it has received about how to stop smoking.
