The Mound - #35 - How to Quit Smoking

Welcome to The Mound, a weekly newsletter in which we at Good One Creative pitch— for free — our solutions to the world’s problems.

A recent report by ANU researchers has revealed that smokers are not the poor, unhealthy, and uneducated swine ANU researchers thought them to be. Smokers are, according to the study, a group as diverse as Australia itself.

Many Australian smokers apparently expressed their desire to reprimand the researchers for even embarking on such an offensive line of questioning - but unfortunately the researchers' offices were located above a rather lengthy set of stairs.

With these results, the publishers of this study hope the Government will be able to create more effective advertising that better speaks to the rich, the beautiful, and equally addicted.

Now, whilst we believe the good folk at ANU were right to question the ability of relatively younger, healthier Australian smokers to relate to the image of a smoker on his deathbed, they shouldn't assume their new target persona will react any differently if the sheets on which this smoker lays are made of Egyptian Cotton. To better help smokers quit, we may need to reconsider the message itself.

Here's how we fix it:

Cigarette packaging currently asks smokers to consider where this habit must eventually lead: to some variant of a slow and painful death. The issue with this approach, though, is that terminal or devastating illness is what philosopher L.A. Paul calls a transformative experience, an experience that by definition fundamentally, irreversibly alters your perception of the world and your place in it. These changes occur so deeply they beggar imagination, let alone conveyance. This is why, to a childless person, you just can't explain the anxieties of parenthood. This is also why my date last week didn't laugh at a 45-minute story that ended with Dave shitting his pants at my niece's confirmation. Of course, it was the funniest thing that's ever happened, but you really had to be there.

Going forward, I and advocates for quitting cigarettes would do well to employ, rather than our very worst / best stories, images and examples to which our audience can more readily relate. So instead of asking me (at 10PM in a 7/11, mind you) to imagine the horror of a cancer diagnosis, show me the horror of precisely this moment. Show me how dead I already am.

We propose the Government, instead of showing us pictures of literal death on cigarette packaging, present us with the images of a man doing slightly better than we are.

In one scene Ryan might be running alongside his friend and quite clearly maintaining a conversation all the while. In another scene he might be visiting his parents. During colder months we might see Ryan spending some discretionary income upon a scarf - and during Summer we might see Ryan and a lady he's just met in the beer garden at his local pub, the two of them giggling at the bloke next to them - a clearly unhealthy man - who's unaware as to his blowing a cloud-full of noxious fumes into their general direction, thus pushing the couple a few inches closer together, a closeness from which neither person will ever again withdraw...

To really drive the nail into the coffin of addiction, we'll also propose this packaging employ a technology not seen since Tazos - the shimmering, holographic capability of some collectors cards to display another, secret image depending on the angle at which the cards are seen. At first glance, the packet of cigarettes displays an image of Ryan - but, at another angle, one is then presented with a purely reflective service. Especially after seeing a picture of Ryan living his best life, the reflection of one's own sad visage beneath the fluorescent lights of a 7/11 at 10PM on a Thursday is - surely - as close to a transformative experience as packaging could provide. 

You're welcome, Australia.