Anti-smoking ad: Portrait of our culture?

The ad's main objective is to encourage parents to speak to their kids about not smoking. In doing so, the ad could also be allowing kids to become aware of the damage that they do to their parents and any other adults who they may love. Another possible secondary objective of the ad could be to make companies aware of the damage they cause to families and thus place them under even more social pressure than they already have from all the media. The calm image that covers most of the ad avoids a visual overload of information that could make the ad unattractive to the eyes and the emphasis on the words "Help me" and "kids" triggers a caring response in the people reading the ad, and accompanied by the also emphasized word "cigarettes" the ad gives the viewer a quick overview of what the problem is and hooks the audience so that they close in and read the more specific information at the bottom. Since the ad is in English and it shows an image of a father and a child fishing together (a stereotypical father-child activity in western culture) the ad is most likely to be from a western English-speaking country.

The ad makes emphasis on the value of the family, by using an image that can easily be associated with a family activity and by constantly saying "your kids" at the bottom, triggering the thought of one's own children. The ad takes a rather unusual approach to the problem of smoking: instead of talking about all the negative effects of smoking, it assumes that one already knows them (thus revealing that the ad is most likely from a developed society, where media has usually already widespread what the problem with smoking is). The fact that the ad targets the value of the family suggests that in the place where this ad was placed people hold that in a high regard, people care about their families. If this was not the case then the advertisers would not have chosen to emphasize in this value. The ad not only makes reference to the family, but also attempts to make family bonds stronger, since speaking to one's children about not smoking and thus impacting their lives is a good way to strengthen them. The image and the whole "atmosphere" of the ad is very calm and serene, which means that the people targeted by the ad are likely to be the kind that value these characteristics. For this reason, children and teenagers are an unlikely primary audience of the ad since at that age it is not as common to value calm and serenity in such high regard. Also regarding the values highlighted in the ad, as I mentioned before the ad is part of the entire anti-smoking movement, which shows that the people of that place are publicly against smoking.

The ad not only empowers parents who wish to speak to their children about not smoking, but pretty much empowers any adult that might feel motivated to do this. The ad places the children and the entire family as a whole in a very high regard. Smoking companies would be the ones being marginalized in this situation, since they are the root of the problem that is being addressed. As a matter of fact, the entire group of people who smoke are being marginalized in this ad since the ad is encouraging families to stay away from that "vibe." This just shows how much that society is against smoking and how they reject people that are related to it.