Edgy anti-smoking ads draw cautious praise

RICHMOND, Va. -- He's billed as America's most pathetic superhero: Buttman, an overweight chain-smoker who hacks, spits and gets too winded to respond to emergencies.

Buttman is part of a series of anti-smoking ads increasingly popular with youths in Virginia, a steadfast tobacco state that's home to industry giant Philip Morris USA. A recent survey suggests that most children in the state are aware of the television and radio initiative, perhaps due to its in-your-face humor and high gross-out factor.

"You should be almost able to stop any kid on the street, and only one in four couldn't tell you about the campaign," said Danny Saggese, marketing coordinator for the Virginia Tobacco Settlement Foundation, which funds the advertisements.

A step forward

Last year, the advertising industry publication Adweek gave its approval to the Buttman ads. And a leading anti-smoking group, the Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids, cautiously praised the foundation and its Richmond ad firm, Work Inc. It called the campaign a step forward in spite of the state's poor record of funding tobacco prevention.

"I think the foundation is on the right track," said Danny McGoldrick, research director for the Washington, D.C., organization. The edgy campaign has reached about three-quarters of its target audience -- children ages 10 to 17 -- since it began in 2002, according to a recent Harris Interactive survey commissioned by the foundation. The research also revealed that more Virginia teens and preteens now believe tobacco use hurts their self-esteem and social acceptance.

Among the childrens' favorites is an ad in which a girl tastes a trash-can lid and car tire, with the message that these disgusting habits are comparable to smoking. The same theme emerges when a group of children visits the school's cool nose-picking spot, a takeoff on the informal smoking areas outside many schools.

Wearing thick, black-framed glasses, the disheveled Buttman appears in several spots: lighting up at a gas station, flicking ashes into the cup of a prospective employer and making children cry.

Under development is an ad that mimics a reality TV program; kids eat bowls of nasty critters to show that smoking can diminish the ability to taste.

In addition to the broadcast ads, the marketing campaign includes a Web site and billboards.

Anti-smoking advocates say such aggressive initiatives are needed to help lower youth tobacco use rates. The 2002 National Youth Tobacco Survey found that 13.3 percent of middle school students and 28.4 percent of high school students used some form of tobacco.

Virginia has no recent figures on youth tobacco use, and its earlier reporting was not comparable to national numbers, a state health official said. But in 2002, about a quarter of Virginia adults smoked, compared with the national rate of 23 percent, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The younger the adult, the higher the rate.

Funding for the ads come from the state's share of a historic settlement with tobacco manufacturers. The Virginia Tobacco Settlement Foundation gets about $14 million a year to cover a number of community, education and enforcement programs to prevent youth tobacco use.

Virginia officials have reduced some of the foundation's funding due to budget problems.

While Buttman and similar ads have proven to be popular, they compete with the tobacco industry's multibillion-dollar marketing machine. Cigarette companies can no longer target U.S. youths, but they still depict adult smokers as "cool," an image that conflicts with and perhaps overpowers the message of Virginia's upstart campaign, said McGoldrick of the Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids.

Virginia isn't the only state that has created edgy ads attacking smoking. California, for instance, plastered billboards with pictures of a cowboy resembling the Marlboro Man. "I miss my lung, Bob," he says to a friend.

But Virginia's ads make a point of not chasing after tobacco companies. Foundation and ad-firm officials say politics aren't involved. Rather, the advertisements are successful because they don't preach -- the "kiss of death" for ads targeting teens and preteens, said Rob Austin, executive vice president of the Work ad firm, which has a three-year, $27 million contract for its part in the campaign.

But sometimes grown-ups can't seem to help themselves.

Rebecca Darby, a 17-year-old member of the foundation's board of trustees and a Goochland High School senior, says she sometimes has to remind the adults in the group that finger-wagging isn't the best approach for her generation.

Kids "just like to know the information so they can decide for themselves," said Rebecca.

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On the Net:

Virginia Tobacco Settlement Foundation www.vtsf.org

Youth smoking-prevention site funded by the foundation www.ydouthink.com