Stop smoking ads can be very useful in an effort to educate the general public about the hazards of tobacco use. I still remember having conversations with my parents about smoking after we saw an advertisement on the television. My dad, who smoked, told me smoking was bad and we shouldn't do it. He reinforced the message given on the advertisement. Eventually, he quit cold turkey while I was in college. He later told me that was one of the best decisions he had ever made.
Recently, I blogged about how there were talks of putting graphic pictures on cigarette packaging. People with stomas, oral cancer, etc. The thought process was that the graphic picture warning on the packaging would be more effective than the standard textual "Surgeon General's" warning.
In Australia, they brought these two ad campaigns together. A recent study from Brennan and others in the Tobacco Control journal, evaluated this synergy of adverstisements in an article entitled "Mass media campaigns desidned to support new pictorial health warnings on cigarette packets: evidence of a compliementary relationship" [2011 Apr 7 - Epub ahead of print].
The authors concluded that there does seem to be a synergy between television smoking cessation advertisements and graphic pictorial health warnings on cigarette packaging. They found a complimentary relationship in raising awareness in a positive way about the terrible health consequences associated with tobacco use. They feel that television or mass media campaigns can improve depth of understanding and help personalize the "quit for your own health" message.
I think this article also points to the success that can be found within a national advertising smoking cessation strategy. I'm still amazed that we'll spend billions (with a B) of dollars to treat disease, but we won't spend a couple of million for advertising to help spread the message that smoking is bad.
