Video: award-winning public-service ads designed to scare smokers into quitting

View ads from Massachusetts and Armenia designed to scare smokers into quitting.

while directing tobacco-control efforts for the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, professor of the practice of public health Gregory N. Connolly oversaw a campaign of public-service ads designed to scare smokers into quitting and to keep youths from viewing the habit as glamorous. The award-winning ads—some brutally graphic—aired in the state from 1995 to 2001 and became a model for similar efforts in other states and countries.

View six examples here:

 

Armenia is one of a dozen nations that have developed anti-smoking ad campaigns in consultation with scholars at Harvard School of Public Health. The video below includes two ads from the Armenia campaign. In the first, the message is that one shouldn't gamble with one's health; in the second, that smoking around one's children is like the children themselves smoking.

You might also like

How AI Is Reshaping Supply Chains

Harvard Kennedy School lecturer on using AI to strengthen supply chains

This Astronomer is Sounding a Warning on ‘Space Junk’

As debris accumulates in low Earth orbit, the danger of destructive collisions continues to rise.

Understanding AI Vulnerabilities

As artificial intelligence capabilities evolve, so too will the tactics used to exploit them. 

Most popular

The University will compensate families of those whose remains were sold and establish a scholarship to honor anatomical donors.

The program will focus on the U.S. Congress and the separation of powers in its first year.

The 1884 Cannibalism-at-Sea Case That Still Has Harvard Talking

The Queen v. Dudley and Stephens changed the course of legal history. Here’s why it’s been fodder for countless classroom debates.

Explore More From Current Issue

A vase of yellow flowers on a table next to an orange and a glass.

Harvard Art Museums restores a rare glimpse of an American master.

Caricature of a young man in front of red doors, wearing a green striped sweater.

In 1954, Gregory Corso moved into Eliot House. How he stayed there is a literary legend.

A glowing bulb shape surrounded by colorful, swirling energy lines against a blue background.

Harvard researchers achieve medical breakthroughs in cancer therapy and infection control.