Truth Humour Fail
The Truth Initiative misses the mark again with lie-fuelled ‘humour’ videos campaigning against vaping
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by Dave Cross
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Robin Koval is the chief executive officer and president of Truth Initiative. She previously earned a living by pushing distilled spirits and pharmaceuticals as one of the “100 Most Influential Women in Advertising”.
She is using those marketing skills to drive an anti tobacco-harm reduction agenda, but (as is so often the way) what she thinks is clever humour falls flat with its target audience because she is so removed from them.
Recently, The Truth Initiative launched a “cringe worthy” campaign that involved them offering to pay people to protest.
The latest videos produced by Truth are aimed at ‘da kidz’, yet low viewing figures reveal they simply don’t hold a shareable cachet within the demographic.
Truth writes: “Big Tobacco uses flavours to sugar-coat and mask the risks of e-cigarette use — it’s no surprise, then, that 71% of young adults who’ve used e-cigarettes started with flavours. Thanks to nicotine, far too many young people have become addicted to ‘chuggin on clouds.’ The good news is that there’s help for anyone looking to quit.”
Clouds Rap
“Because they contain heavy metals and residual nicotine, e-cigarettes/pods can qualify as both e-waste and biohazard waste. Definitely not something to toss on the ground, but people do and it’s ‘sending Earth to hell in a pod-shaped coffin’.”
Heavy Metal Kills
The pair of videos are exceptionally poor, but then what can you expect from a lobby group that brought you a video featuring big testicles by mistake?
Hairy Testicles
Comments are disabled for the two latest music videos, but you can let the Truth Initiative know your thoughts on its Twitter page.
One of the latest messages to come from the organisation states: “The risks that e-cigarettes, like JUUL, pose to the environment will only grow as their popularity increases. The youth e-cigarette epidemic may soon be an environmental concern as well as a public health crisis.”
On this it has a point; all manufacturers of coils and devices need to be offering a green solution to recycling old products. Some responsible UK stores already offer a recycling service for old batteries and many other businesses need to get up to speed – but patronising teenagers won’t achieve that end.
Dave Cross
Journalist at POTVDave is a freelance writer; with articles on music, motorbikes, football, pop-science, vaping and tobacco harm reduction in Sounds, Melody Maker, UBG, AWoL, Bike, When Saturday Comes, Vape News Magazine, and syndicated across the Johnston Press group. He was published in an anthology of “Greatest Football Writing”, but still believes this was a mistake. Dave contributes sketches to comedy shows and used to co-host a radio sketch show. He’s worked with numerous start-ups to develop content for their websites.
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