Dear truth marketing representatives,
I don’t know if the things I look at online prompt the marketing algorithms to target me with your advertisements, or if the microphones in my electronic devices are listening to my conversations, but I see at least three ads for the truth campaign every day.
I assume that you pay to have your advertisements placed around projects that are targeted at my demographic (college-aged children of the internet) and I understand that you have benevolent intentions in spreading your message. However, no matter what the reason is, or how good your intentions may be, there isn’t a minute to lose — you need to stop airing your commercials immediately.
I’m sad to say that every time you play one of your subversive culture-hacking public service announcements on television or before a YouTube clip, I crave a cigarette more than I ever have in my entire life. I thought the first time it was just a fluke. Maybe I was so addicted, that the mere mention of a cigarette would be enough to send me outside to hack a butt until I was coughing up chunks of lung onto my shoes.
I gave it another chance. But, after those next few viewings I knew it wasn’t a fluke. There was something specific, aggressive and palpable about the way that I craved a cigarette every time a truth commercial would come across my screen.
One of the last ones I saw began talking about how Big Tobacco genetically enhanced the tobacco in cigarettes to be more addictive. I know I was supposed to be horrified. I know the data was supposed to scare me into quitting. I know the culture-hacking millennial aesthetic was designed to better relate to someone my age. I know that I was supposed feel a deeply indignant rage because I had been lied to and manipulated for years by Big Tobacco and similar corporations. I am ashamed to admit that not only did I want a cigarette worse than ever, but I had an erection that tore straight through the lining of my jeans. This isn’t the kind of thing I would normally admit, but I feel it is pertinent because of the nature of what you are trying to do.
Somehow, in the process of creating an anti-smoking campaign, you managed to engineer subliminal advertising that has exponentially strengthened my nicotine addiction.
Before I saw your ads, I was several weeks free of cigarettes — 32 days at least. It was the longest personal record I have ever held. I was finally rid of all of the supplements on the market. I burned through e-cigarettes, patches, gum and anything else that would placate the demon living inside me. Finally, I tossed them all and began functioning without nicotine. It was a huge step for me — not only for my health, but as a person as well. I was developing discipline and doing things to benefit my future instead of just satisfying myself in the present.
Unfortunately, the day I was exposed to your commercials was the day I was unable to turn back. I fear that your campaign is inadvertently influencing me subliminally and, even worse, I fear that it may be doing the same to thousands of other young people who are desperately trying to escape the mental prison of their addiction to cigarettes.
It makes me feel bad to have to point this out, but I feel like it is necessary given how important your cause is and how embarrassing this must be for you.
Please consider removing your campaign from the airwaves and returning to the drawing board.
Sincerely,
Tyler Spinosa
