Thai 'Smoking Kids' anti-smoking ad goes viral
A Thai anti-smoking ad has gone viral since hitting the internet last week. The ad uses children to ‘trick’ smokers on the streets of Bangkok.
‘Smoking Kids’ was created by Ogilvy Asia on behalf of the Thai Health Promotion Foundation and has had more than 740,000 views on YouTube in the last week.
The ad which sees children approach smokers and ask for a light sees a number of responses each advising the child that smoking is bad.
"If you smoke you die faster," one man tells a little boy. "Don't you want to live and play?"
"When you smoke you suffer from lung cancer, emphysema and strokes," another says.
After the exchange the child hands the adult a brochure entitled ‘You worry about me. But why not worry about yourself?’
So far advert is proving to be more effective than the shock campaigns used in the West, where packets of cigarettes come with images such as lung or throat cancer, as the national ‘quit smoking’ hotline has seen a 40 per cent rise in calls since it was aired.