Shock anti-smoking TV ads rescheduled after complaints
By Tan Hui Leng, TODAY | Posted: 29 March 2007 0756 hrs

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It was intended to shock, and it succeeded — so well, in fact, that a flood of complaints from parents has caused the Health Promotion Board (HPB) to reschedule the screening time of its anti-smoking advertising campaign on television.

It will now only be aired from 8pm, when youngsters are less likely to be watching TV.

The 30-second commercial, which first aired on all the four main language channels last week, is a graphic depiction of a woman afflicted with oral cancer. The camera zooms in on a tight shot of her face with a diseased tongue, decaying teeth and chapped lips riddled with sores.

Said HPB’s chief executive, Mr Lam Pin Woon: "HPB has reviewed and revised our advertising timing and channels to minimise causing any alarm to young children."

Housewife Leong Sow Chan was one of the peeved parents. Her nine-year-old daughter was so traumatised by the commercial the first time she saw it that she had a nightmare that night.

"She started screaming at about 3am and woke my husband up. He had to attend to her," said Madam Leong.

While she still does not think the commercial is in appropriate taste, she admitted that it "definitely turns me and my non-smoking family off. We are so disgusted we either switch channels when the ad comes on, or look away".

Indeed, the preliminary results seem to prove the power of the shock tactics. According to the HPB, since last Tuesday’s launch of the three-month-long Smoking Control Campaign, its toll-free smoking QuitLine (1800-4382000) has seen a five-fold increase in the number of calls.

And significantly more of the callers are asking not just for information
about smoking, "but are also expressing a desire to quit smoking and asking for advice on doing so", said the HPB.

While some 70 to 80 per cent of the email feedback that the board has also received about the ad campaign has been positive, just to be on the safe side it is ensuring that other advertising channels — such as bus shelter boards — are situated away from childcare centres and primary schools.

On Wednesday, the HPB launched another advertising tactic at Raffles Place — featuring a "sick patient" on a stretcher being monitored by a doctor, and nurses distributing flyers to lunchtime crowds. The set-up will move to Orchard Walkway on Thursday.

Such in-your-face advertisements constitute Phase 1 of the campaign. Phase 2 will be rolled out in early May, and it will take on a more "encouraging and positive" approach.

This year’s campaign follows through on the revised graphic health warnings on tobacco packaging, introduced last November, which depict some of the many smoking-related diseases and conditions such as neck cancer, gangrene and a miscarried foetus.

According to a 2004 survey by the HPB, 21 per cent of smokers tried to abstain from the habit after reading health warning labels. - TODAY/il