The truth is that most teenagers don't feel much peer pressure to smoke, because the majority of teens don't do it. The R.J. Reynolds anti-smoking campaign is equally disingenuous. Ultimately, this message is just a subtler form of marketing. Ironically, the very first television anti-smoking commercial, which Schwartz created in 1963, hit this theme. The ad featured a pair of children dressing up in their parents' clothes - long white dress for the girl, suit and top hat for the boy, and posing in front of a mirror.
Children learn by imitating their parents.
There's no single formula, says Jeff McKenna, director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's Office of Smoking and Health, which tracks anti-smoking efforts and their effectiveness. One of their recent ads features a group of dapper young men in tuxes who light their cigarettes as a gorgeous young woman walks in. As the announcer tells us about the link between smoking and impotence, their cigarettes suddenly go limp - and the woman looks mockingly at them and walks away. Direct satires of the tobacco industry have also been touted as a way to persuade kids that smoking isn't as rebellious as they may think. The first and most celebrated ad in the California television campaign hit this theme hard.