The Truth Campaign/Culture of Cool

When we talked about the Truth campaign in class, (as an ad major) I got pretty excited because it is one of my favorite campaigns. I also think the Truth campaign uses the culture of what is “cool” to its advantage.

The Truth campaign created a new product and branded it. It made itself seem cool to teens by attacking “the man,” (in this case, “the man” is tobacco company execs who want teens to smoke) which teens seem to respond to. The Truth campaign also does not just talk at teens; it involves teens in their brand, giving them an outlet to yell at “the man.”

It takes a different stance on smoking; it doesn’t say they are against smokers, it says they are against the industry. I believe this is a better positioning than other campaigns. They realize teens want to be rebellious; this is why the Truth campaign doesn’t simply say, “Don’t smoke.” (Because they will!) The campaign points out that by smoking, teens who smoke are being the opposite of rebellious by listening to the tobacco companies’ message. This way of treating teens as smart consumers attracts them even more to the Truth campaign.

In response to Christopher’s post, I believe the Truth campaign has been very successful. I believe using the power of “cool” made the campaign very successful. By pointing out that smoking is not rebellious, many teens stopped seeing smoking as cool. The Truth campaign also presents research that its campaign has been successful too. (On the Truth web site – it claims in 2002 there were about 300,000 fewer youth smokers due to Truth.) By encouraging advocacy participation and focusing on rebellion/culture of cool, the Truth campaign rallied together a united youthful voice. Although there are now taxes on tobacco and other laws governing tobacco companies, I believe the Truth campaign helped lead to these regulations.

On another note, my favorite thing about the Truth campaign is how it used promotions to involve its target audience in the brand. For example, Truth wanted to point out to teens that cigarettes contain ammonia. Their first idea was this: “Cigarettes contain ammonia. So does dog poop.” Gross, right? But if they did not market this in the right way, it would not have spoken to their target. So, they stuck small signs directly into actual dog poop in parks that stated that message. They took these signs and put it on their print ads, so the reader could punch them out and do it themselves. They also filmed Truth volunteers putting these signs in dog poop and showed it on television. They created their own culture of “cool” by being “culture jammers.”