Advertising And Social Media Analysis: Mad Men

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My analysis topic stems from my great admiration for the television series “Mad Men”. Mad Men takes place in the 1960s and the story centers on multiple advertising agencies. Many advertising agencies in the 1960s generated a lot of their income from tobacco companies, namely Lucky Strike and Marlboro. But as time progressed, scientists discovered the many health risks associated with smoking cigarettes. North Americans quickly became cognizant of these risks and the number of smokers has dramatically declined. On the societal level, Canadian government officials banned any type of tobacco marketing in 2003 with the Tobacco Act. The only type of advertising that is allowed are advertisements that are sent through mailed publications (i.e. magazine). Unfortunately, for the tobacco industry, this form of advertising is relatively ineffective compared to digital forms of advertising such as online publications, social media …show more content…
Health Warning Messages are required to cover 75% of the front and back of packages to ensure the buyer sees the messages. These Health Warning Messages consist of frightening images and jarring descriptions. For example, one label shows an extremely thin looking man on his deathbed and the caption reads, “This is what dying of lung cancer looks like”. Intuitively, these labels should scare people and, thus, lower the number of smokers. Research has found that when smokers actively interpret these messages, they experience emotions such as fear and disgust. As a result, the participants decreased or quit smoking (Hammond et al., 2006). That said, I argue that these messages are actually ineffective since, for the most part, smokers would choose not to actively interpret the health labels. While warning messages may cover 75% of the box, the threatening labels only work if smokers spend time processing the