A Brazilian Reasons Not To Smoke Cigarettes

(Just how many is a brazilian?)

There’s a crowded field of anti-smoking ads across the world, but some of them manage to stand out better than others. This is one of those ads, When Smoking Does Not Kill, for the Paraná Health Department.

It’s easy to forget that smoking isn’t a “once you’re out, you’re good” kind of health risk. If you get hit by a car you don’t suddenly get whiplash a year later. If you swim with sharks they don’t follow you home.

But as this ad shows, you can stop smoking and find yourself suffering the after-effects as many as fourteen years later. Shock-moment ads aren’t all that rare when it comes to public health campaigns, but this one generates that shock well. Firstly by taking a new slant on information (the hidden, waiting risks). And secondly by playing around with the setting, undermining the last refuge of cigarette advertising in most countries – point of sale.

It’s true that we have the health warnings on cigarettes, a static reminder of the risks from the moment you buy. But it’s easy to throw some distance between yourself and an image, thinking subconsciously that it’s an exaggeration, or simply that it couldn’t happen to you. Good to see an ad that aggressively challenges that view, and the status quo.

Your cigarette seller has no larynx. What are you going to do now?

The only shame about this ad is that in reality, the vast majority of the audience are not going to be at that potent point of sale moment. The ad isn’t in fact going to be challenging people as they buy a cigarette. It’s challenging them while they sit at home. The video is what most people see, and the impactful part of the ad – that face-to-face interaction – is just a one-off event. So the impact is limited.

You see this a lot at the moment. Think of the “Pub Loo Shocker” in the UK in 2013, a scare video set in a pub toilet, designed to frighten people who might choose to drunk-drive. Interesting? Yes. Engaging? Of course. Viral? Certainly.

But if I’m drunk and about to step into a car my first thought isn’t going to be to look up viral videos.

The message and the execution of the Brazilian ad are extremely powerful. It’s just a shame there isn’t more of it; imagine if they could roll that exact scenario out across a country for a week.

You’d certainly generate more headlines. And you might just challenge a few more people in a serious way.

Why is Amsterdam the Centre of World Advertising Right Now?

Of course that’s begging the question to an extent. But if you ask around you’ll find that most people see Amsterdam as the place to be for great advertising, and the place to go if you’re an ambitious AE or creative. More to the point, the number of international accounts with global brands being snagged by agencies based in Amsterdam is huge.

So why Amsterdam? There are a lot of reasons really. Even more so than London, the city is diverse, culturally and linguistically, and has a reputation, rightly or wrongly, for toleration and cultural liberalism, the heart of the ad industry. Everyone speaks English.

It’s also a beautiful city, and one with a lot more to offer than meets the eye (the food is great too). But all of these traits can be attributed to other great cities, from London to New York. So why is Amsterdam on top right now?

The answer lies in a comment made to me by an agency CEO who has been working there for a number of years. “Agencies around here are friendly, they’re neighbours, they get along, they don’t worry about accounts being lost amongst them, or partners moving from place to place. They know that an account here or there is not the end of the world." The goal is the work, not the politics behind it.

Perhaps this attitude is only maintained because of the growth in the AMS ad world. Perhaps only optimism prevents infighting. But that’s not what I see there.

Creativity often comes from adversity, but it rarely springs out of politicking and rivalry. The great UK ad agencies are not the ones fighting aggressively over accounts, but the ones confident, pitching for what they want rather than for the table scraps.

Amsterdam has learned the lesson from the London ad world, the lesson that London itself has not. Advertising is not improved by politics. Advertising is best when formed in a culture of multiculturalism and curiosity.

Let’s be serious. M&C Saatchi is a dying firm. So is Leo Burnett. Why? Because they have become bureaucracies, more fixated on infighting and bitter turf wars inside and outside of the agency.

The best agencies are those that have realised that success means not caring about wins or losses. That, despite the pretentiousness of this statement, the journey is more important than the end result. Because the journey is what makes the end result a result.

Amsterdam agencies have realised this. They’ve realised that advertising is not the same as business. It has to be engaging inside and out. And that fighting just isn’t as good as cooperation in growing ideas.