Quitline Angel

Just in case you ever want to quit smoking in Australia, here is a handy little ad from the government. It’s one of a series they made the tobacco companies apply to all their packaging. The others show grisly photos of gangrene (from reduced circulation) and the ravages of mouth cancer which is heady stuff to be sure, but this one is my favourite on so many levels. So much so that I scanned it right off the pack for you people who insist on reading this crap, thereby forcing me to eject more.

Here we have an excellent example of marketing techniques straight out of the book. The text is in no-nonsense, left justified Arial. Black, red and white – the serious colours. But it’s the condescending little photo-play that I love best. The man on the left is a Dirty Smoker. This is indicated for us by the way the shot is cropped so he has no headroom behind which creates a visual tension. The tones are cool and bluish and he’s lit obliquely from behind creating fairly harsh shadows. He needs a shave and holds the phone like he’s listening to Asian Schoolgirl Confessions in the bathroom. He is a Dirty Bad Smoker, that’s for sure.

The photographs are separated by a diagonal slash of telephone line to let us know the two people are indeed communicating by telephone in case we missed the fact the man is holding a telephone and the woman has her professional Telephone Angel head rig on. And isn’t she an angel? Shining golden hair, warm soft lighting. She is framed so her eye level is slightly above his and she’s given plenty of headroom which relaxes the shot visually. She is smiling because she can help the Dirty Smoker even though she is above such things. It really is an act of mercy and kindness. She may ask him to bark like a dog to prove his worthiness of her telephone advice, but that’s seems fair considering the enormous gift she is about to bestow on this wretch of a man, this degenerate tobacco fiend.

At some point the Dirty Smoker will break into fits of sobbing as he admits how he used to smoke with his morning coffee almost every day, how he once smoked in plain sight of a school…how he once gave a cigarette to a work colleague who was out. Several months later that colleague died of complications from a burst appendix. He told himself it was a coincidence. And through the sobs our Telephone Angel will make soothing sounds from a list she has been given by a person who writes government lists and the Dirty Smoker will repent his evil ways, blubber at her feet and ask her out on a date. The angel will smile knowingly and tell the man he is cured and, no, she cannot date him as he is unclean and will always be so. But she will still wish him a nice day before disconnecting to move on to the next haunted being requiring her divine attention.

The Reformed Dirty Smoker will feel as though he has been released from the bonds of nicotine. He will feel as though he has his whole life to begin afresh and he will also feel embarrassed about asking such a perfect creature to even consider dating him. He will realize the only thing he can do now is stalk her every move, living vicariously through her perfect-ness. He will throw a roll of duct tape and an Asian Schoolgirl uniform into the back of the car and head off in search of his one, true, Angel.

You see? He really was a degenerate. You could tell from the photo.