World No Tabaco Day Analysis

The text chosen is an advertisement from a company called McCann Health Worldwide. It is a smoking prevention advertisement which was made for World No Tabaco Day in 2010, drawing attention to the negative health effects of smoking cigarettes. The target audience for this advertisement is probably young people between the ages of 18 to 25, since the advertisement features a young woman. Also, the target audience is probably those who smoke, or people who are thinking about starting to smoke; around this age, a great deal of people start smoking, leading to health consequences as they grow older. The central image of the advertisement shows a woman smoking a cigarette, and half of her face is covered with smoke. The smoke-covered right side has aged skin and lips, stained teeth, clouded eyes, and overall, has clearly faded in beauty. The surface message of this advertisement is that one should not smoke, since smoking will cause health complications as one ages. By contrasting the beautiful non-smoking side, with the aged smoking side, the advertisement successfully alerts the reader to the fact that smoking can negatively affect them. Also, by using a dark

The advertisement highlights the differences between the face covered with smoke, or the face of a smoker, and the normal face, or the face of a non-smoker, which gives a biased impression to the audience that the change in appearance is the most important effect of smoking. The advertisement is missing several rather significant consequences of smoking, such as its effects on the lungs, brain, and other organs—all of which cannot be detected from outside. At the bottom of the advertisement, it reads, “[tobacco] will destroy your face cell by cell, from the inside out.” This sentence also indicates the advertisement’s argument that distortions in appearance are the main reasons people should not