Hooked on their own petard
Wednesday, April 30, 2008 According to the Advertising Standards Authority annual report, published today, the advertisement that received the largest number of complaints in 2007 was a Department of Health campaign showing people with giant fish-hooks in their mouths.
According to the Telegraph, the £7 million (seven million!!) television and poster campaign "prompted 774 complaints from people who found them offensive, frightening and distressing".
Although the ASA found that the ads were "unlikely to cause serious offence or distress to adult viewers", it upheld the complaints "and ordered the Department of Health not to run the campaign again".
Too late, some might say, but I don't. The fact that it was the most complained about advertisement demonstrates a significant degree of opposition. The government will think twice before embarking on a similar campaign and it gives me confidence that smokers are no pushovers.
So, well done to everyone who took the trouble to write and complain. Now we have to channel that energy in other directions.
Reader Comments (9)
I was one to complain. To make any complaint more effective tell ASA it is upsetting to your kids.
I caught a part of Radio 4's PM yesterday in which an interviewee (whose identity I didn't find out) observed that MPs often vote according to their postbag which I interpreted to mean that they use volume of mail on a particular subject, the view expressed and strength of that view to gauge national feeling.
I've tended to think that a few smokers writing to their MPs would achieve nothing and wrote to mine about the smoking ban only recently because of the forthcoming elections.
As a smoker, I generally feel powerless in the face of the apparent Anti success. If this interviewee is right, however, a campaign to encourage smokers to just do one thing, to write just one letter, would actually be effective There are just some 600 MPs and 12 million smokers. If even one in ten smokers wrote then an MP would receive over 1,500 letters. They wouldn't dare ignore that postbag.
Joyce: An acquaintance of mine used to be a Head Of Communications for one of the major political parties and he smokes!! He said that MPs get at best 5 letters a day from constituents. So if we keep writing we will get somewhere. Based on my evidence on passive smoking, my understanding is that this has been communicated to the person concerned and privately the person will say SHS is harmless. I appreciate I have not been specific and I open myself up for accusations of hubris and bullsh1t but that was my conversation. I am afraid you may have to take me on my word for what it is worth.
Are you saying, Dave, that,if smokers (and tolerant non-smokers) write to their MPs, although in public the MPs will continue to state that ETS is harmful, when they next review the legislation they will be influenced by their "postbag"?
I'm afraid the only way to get them to change their minds or become more courageous in telling the truth is to force the issue and forced it will be, eventually. Cop a load of his massive demonstration in Germany:
http://www.gmx.de/mc/OsF5mWw5mrodkLOhnJIUARREcm3zUK
As it happens, I also wrote to my MP and he's a gormless as a Kalifornian on acid. And Kalifornia is where he got most of his ideas.
I've written to a variety of others. The response from Charles Kennedy was the most ridiculous. This, of course, is the guy who got busted for smoking on train, and who has complained privately to Liberal Democrat members that he doesn't like the antis. Anyway, plainly Kennedy did not write his own response but had an oik to do it and there were all these marvellous figures quoted as though just off the cuff.
What a load of b*****ks these Lib Dems do write.
Margot: Yes. In my opinion if you go on the tack of nanny/bully state and include references to smoking it should do the trick.
Can you post Kennedys response Blad?
I don't think influencing parliament is rocket science but it does take organising and commitment to see it through.
We really are our own worst enemies in many ways as mostly we just moan and shrug our shoulders in prvate and between friends at our sorry sitution.
That situation was brought about my a minority with anti-democratic ideals (opresing a huge section of the populace) and junk scince and lobbying parliament - which they've done effectively.
We need to respond, get our much more powerful arguments across and our much larger people numbers. Who's fault is it if not ours?
Lathergy is our No.1 problem, not smoking!
there are more smokers registered to vote, than the number of people who voted for this government.....