Talent and modelling agency Talent Management has just seen this Thai anti-smoking campaign from Ogilvy & Mather Bangkok that employs a very clever use of child models and actors in order to get its anti-smoking message across. You can watch the full advertisement below.

The advertisement begins with images of smokers on the streets of Thailand and the words ‘Adults know that smoking is harmful, but don’t remind themselves of this fact’, and ‘How would they feel when a child smokes?’. Child models and actors are then shown holding cigarettes and approaching the adult smokers to ask them for “a light”, while being secretly filmed.

In each case the adult smoker is as shocked one would expect, taking time to explain to the child why smoking is dangerous and bad for your health. One smoker tells a child model: “If you smoke you die faster. Don’t you want to live and play?” Another explains: “When you smoke you suffer from lung cancer, emphysema and stroke.” A third exclaims: “Really?” before going on to insist: “Smoking is bad, you have to stop!”

In each case the child model is shown listening patiently to the various lectures that they’re given  before handing a note to the smoker that says, ‘You worry about me. But why not about yourself? Reminding yourself is the most effective warning to help you quit.’

It seems that this statement may well be true, since the associated national hotline has seen a 40 per cent rise in phonecalls since the campaign first aired. The advert also claims that: ‘Almost every adult who received a brochure stopped to think and threw away their cigarette. No adult, however, threw away the brochure.’

This is the latest in a series of anti-smoking campaigns that feature child models and actors. Many are lauding it on YouTube as the best anti-smoking advertisement that they have ever seen.

Do you find yourself more effected by advertisements featuring children than those that feature upsetting images of people suffering from smoking related illnesses?