Smoking Kills? Whudafxup. . .

"Hi. My name is Ben and I am a heavy user."
"Hi Ben."
Ok, so that was a little cheesy. . . oh well. . . After much evaluation, I have discovered that I am what media experts such as the most revered Dr. Andrew Rudd have described as a heavy user. I spend a lot of time watching t.v. every day. Maybe it's because I'm lazy; maybe I'm just bored far too often. Either way, I am well acquainted with the television unit. Just as I am acquainted with shows such as Heroes, 24, The Big Bang Theory, Seinfeld, and Conan Obrien, I have much knowledge in the wide world of advertisements.
One particular slew of advertisements that have captured my attention (and subsequent annoyance) are the "truth" campaigns by a group called Whudafxup. These commercials present "facts" about the tobacco industry that are done in a way that people are prone to listen to and accept.
First off, the commercials use a film format that suggests that they know what they are talking about. This format is one of a documentary. It consists entirely of a shoulder camera following around a "learned" informer named Derrek. While the camera man is following Derrek through random places in America, Derrek recites lots of "facts" about smoking and tobacco companies that paint all tobacco companies as evil enterprises spurned from Satan himself. Throughout the commercial, the camera angles are extreme. They use closeups on the speaker and interviewees to show their innocence and goodness. Then, there are the evil corporations. By using long shots of buildings and other inanimate objects, they project tobacco companies as inhuman, evil institutions bent on destroying the world. They rely on shock tactics that present studies and memos from three decades ago as if they were written yesterday. The real life feel and authoritative nature of the commercials further the image by presenting the Truth logo at the beginning and end of the commercial in bright orange letters, thus painting the picture that tobacco companies really are evil and run by the prince of darkness himself.
This show propagates a very populist philosophy. It says to its viewers, "the institution is evil. We have to get a grassroots effort out there to stop this evil from propagating further. We, not big corporations are the power." It also relies heavily on a derivative of the magic silver bullet theory, by coming up with statistics to fit their desires. A lot of times their metaphors and examples are stretched and taken out of context. Every commercial is filled with "facts" that are decades old. Still though, they get the point across.
We all know that cigarettes are bad for us, but I wish that Whudafxup would just shut the fx up. (No the letters fx in their slogan do not mean effects either.) I don't know one person who has seen their ads and said to themselves, "wow these things really are bad for me. I'm never doing this again." I would say that overall, while these pictures have been very successful in getting the word out there, they are no longer effective, and are just annoying people. It's time that the Truth campaign goes cool hunting so that they can find more effective ways of reaching people with the real truth that smoking kills.