Advertising, ad campaigns, ad agencies, and the people that make it happen

News today that the American Legacy Foundation's national smoking prevention campaign aimed at youth will now be featured on social networking Web sites as the latest phase of the "Infect truth" campaign, leaves me cold. Not because I think America’s youth should be smoking their brains out, but because every anti-smoking campaign ever run has failed. Plus, even though more young people are smoking than ever, the last thing you can do is tell them not to do it. Remember when you were young? I barely can, but I do know one thing. You think you will live forever, and you think you know everything. And as I've written before, obvious advertising will eventually kill the social networking golden goose. As the old John Wannamaker line goes… “I know that 50% of the money I spend on advertising is wasted, I just don’t know which 50%.” In the case of most public service advertising, it’s about 90%. And in the case of smoking and drugs, unfortunately it’s probably 99%.

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