Emotional and Graphic Anti-smoking Advertisements and Its Effectiveness - Term Paper Example

? Emotional and Graphic Anti-smoking Advertisements and Its Effectiveness The paper is aimed at providing sufficient evidence on the effectiveness of emotional and graphic anti-smoking advertisement with the help of research articles on the subject. The use of tobacco is causing thousands of deaths throughout the world every year. This calls for an immediate action to be taken in order to reduce the rate of smokers and people dying due to smoking related chronic diseases. Emotional and Graphic Anti-smoking Advertisements and Its Effectiveness Tobacco consumption causes 443,000 deaths every year in the United States of America alone while on the other hand among the living population of America 8.6 million people are suffering from chronic diseases due to the use of tobacco and strong smoking habit. Research indicates that among the smokers 70% of individuals are inclined to give up smoking. But due to lack of proper assistance and counseling only 5% are successful in leaving the habit (Goldie, 2012). These statistics calls for a strong action regarding anti-smoking campaigns which are effective on the whole community. The best way to reduce the rate of smokers and to provoke a desire to quit smoking is the exposure to the intense emotional and graphic anti-smoking advertisement. In the recent years emotional and graphic Anti-smoking advertisements including media broadcasting have found to be highly effective in reducing the rate of smoking initiation. In this regard emotions play a very important role as people usually compelled to do things which leave deep impact on their minds or affects their emotions. This is evident by the fact that unemotional advertisements are less effective as compared to emotional ones because they arouse the intense feelings within an individual which ultimately leads him to quit smoking while on the other hand emotional advertisement is also less expensive and more impactful (Lois Biener, 2008). The basic aim of emotional and graphic anti-smoking advertisement is to change the behavior of adult smokers through communicating the worst effects of long term and continuous smoking. The most important aspect in reducing the rate of smoking through graphic representation is deciding the dose of advertisement which will be impactful on the smokers if the dose in beyond the limit then the campaign shall not show up the desired results. The selection of messages which will be more effective than others is also a significant task to do. In addition to this the overall impact of the advertisement on the community shall be closely administered because a particular message which is influencing an individual might not necessarily prove to be beneficial for the whole community. A research was conducted in New York State to assess the effectiveness of media advertisement on the number of anti-smokers within a time span of 1 year. For this purpose data concerning individuals from 2003-2010 was acquired from the New York Adult Tobacco Surveys and with respect to it the impact of anti-smoking advertisements including emotional and graphic presentations were examined in order to analyze the impact of these advertisement to stop smoking. The individual experience of smokers while they were exposed to these advertisements was measured by the self-reported complete record and the gross rating points of market-level. The overall research involved 8980 smokers who were grouped on the basis of their desire to quit smoking, income and the educational level (Farrelly MC, 2012). Results indicated that the attempts to quit smoking and the exposure to emotional/graphic anti-smoking advertisements were directly related to one another among the group of smokers who were from varying background, financial statuses and maintain different levels of desire to quit smoking. However, the advertisement which was free from emotional or graphic presentation did not reflect any impact on reducing the smoking desire. Hence it was concluded that on a community level the strong emotional and graphic anti-smoking advertisements are highly beneficial in order to reduce the quit attempts among the young smokers on the population level (Farrelly MC, 2012). The emotional and graphic anti-smoking advertisement is effective due to following reasons (Matthew, 2012): It encourages individuals to forgo smoking through graphically explaining them the long term adverse effects of smoking on the internal and external body parts. They are designed particularly to increase the negative emotions among the smokers regarding smoking and the use of tobacco. These advertisements communicate the message in such an emotional manner that it affects the sensitivity of the smokers who are exposed to it. The anti-smoking advertisements usually include content which is hard-hitting on the mind of smokers. In addition to the pictures of patients who are suffering from chronic diseases especially cancer due to smoking. The real pictures or graphic presentation of internal body organs reflecting their poor condition due to the use of tobacco also make a deep impact on the smokers which certainly leads them towards giving up the extremely fatal habit. Messages which offer advice on smoking termination and reminders about the health hazards associated with the use of tobacco and smoke exposure are found to be ineffective in terminating the habit as they are often neglected by the smokers and also because they contain no emotional content. The selection of words especially when communicating the danger related to smoking has to be highly significant. Anti-smoking advices which are full of scientific explanation and verbose do not leave a long lasting impact on the minds of smokers as do the emotional and graphic advertisements (Matthew, 2012). In order to strengthen the anti-smoking advertisement campaigns government should impose taxes on the use of tobacco; the non-smokers should be grant certain benefits from the state government so that others are motivated to quit the habit for the sake of acquiring the benefits attached to anti-smoking. The advertisement should be broadcasted with fixed time intervals with the intention that people who have already given up the habit might not turn back towards it. However, the dose of advertisement should be calculated as the increased dose might not give the desired results. The intensity of the emotions should be particularly high in anti-smoking advertisements as less intense or advisory advertisements have no significant impact of the behavior of smokers. The highly intense and hard-hitting advertisements does not only motivates the individuals to give up smoking who already have a desire to do so additionally it also encourages and facilitates those smokers who do not have a desire to quit. Conclusion Anti-smoking advertisements based on emotional and graphical content have significant positive impacts over the minds of smokers who have a desire to quit. It facilitates them to give up the smoking habit due to the health hazards attached to the consumption of tobacco. Reseasch indicates the effectiveness of emotional/graphic anti-smoking advertisements on young smokers irrespective to their age, income, background and race (Melanie Wakefield, 2003). Reference Farrelly MC, D. J. (2012, Nov). Promotion of smoking cessation with emotional and/or graphic antismoking advertising. American Journal of Preventive Medicine , pp. 472-482. Goldie, M. P. (2012). Graphic anti-smoking ads increase attempts to quit smoking. RDH eVillage FOCUS . Lois Biener, M. W. (2008, July). How Broadcast Volume and Emotional Content Affect Youth Recall of Anti-Tobacco Advertising. American Journal of Preventive Medicine , pp. 14-19. Matthew, F. (2012). Strong Emotion, Graphic Images Increase Impact of Antismoking Ads. American Journal of Preventive Medicine . Melanie Wakefield, B. F. (2003). Effects of Anti-Smoking Advertising on Youth Smoking: A Review. Journal of Health Communication: International Perspectives; volume 8 , pp. 229-247. Read More