WTF is it with the whole “quit smoking” thing lately? +

Anyone else noticing the high influx of “quit smoking”, “stop smoking”, “you can do it”, “X patch”, “Y patch” type of campaigns recently? Like, the moment the word got out that new legislation is about to be pushed here in Croatia (banning smoking in public places), they started rampaging. It’s like El Dorado. The ad agency owners feel all warm and fuzzy. From what I hear it’s almost as good as the old days: The Golden Age of Croatian Telecom Monopoly (HT, the one and only) Days.

Outdoor advertising, tv commercials, print commercials, promotional websites, radio shows, “experts” having tv and radio guest appearances in anything even remotely connected to “lifestyle” (quoted for general hate towards anything with that fancy-sounding-meaning-nothing name) or health… New brands keep showing up on a daily basis. It just doesn’t stop.

Now, if you’ve ever been involved in the production part of any of the above-listed things, you know that it takes a certain amount of time to actually produce them. Even if you’re just supposed to translate crap given to you by some franchise office. And yet, the big companies launched their campaigns the following morning.

I’ll leave the simple addition of 2 + 2 as an exercise for the reader.