Politics

Smile! You Can Work for a Tobacco Company!

By Anne Landman

The new American Legacy Foundation "truth" Campaign ads use a candid-camera approach to educating the public about the health hazards of smoking. To create the ads, the Campaign ran real online announcements seeking employees for executive-level positions at a tobacco company. The "stage" was a mock job recruiting office in New York City. Actors posed as interviewers while multiple hidden cameras recorded conversations with 40 "applicants" who responded to the ads. Interviewers first tried to impress candidates by describing executive job openings and generous benefits packages in an industry that spends $13 billion a year on marketing in the U.S. alone. They then mentioned that the industry's products kill 1,200 people every day in the U.S., asked interviewees whether they thought changing the name of the company was a reasonable way to avoid bad publicity, and whether they thought they could "plead the Fifth" (pointing out that one tobacco industry executive pled the Fifth Amendment 97 times while giving a deposition in 1997). The cameras captured the candidates' reactions, which were used in the ads. Each ad ends with the question, "Do you have what it takes to be a tobacco executive?" The Campaign had a real job recruiter on hand after the fake interviews to help applicants with real job placement. The ads will run in cinemas in 38 regional markets prior to teen-focused films, and the audience will be able to SMS messages to interact with the ad. The spots will also run on youth-centric channels like MTV, VH1 and Fuse. (The American Legacy Foundation is the funder of CMD's TobaccoWiki project.)

Full post as published by PR Watch on May 29, 2009 (boomark / email).