Free Wholly Smokes by John Sladek

a lot of work in this area.
    We see ourselves putting together an ad with a dozen violent scenes – hockey, football, karate, etc. We would give prominence to Dennis Rodman kicking a cameraman, Mike Tyson biting the famous ear, and the like. Or how about O.J. Simpson demonstrating a knife? (It’s necessary to tread carefully here – we can’t imply an athletic endorsement.)
     

    Dwight Badcock (as Cap’n Savage) 1996
    The Group Three Campaign: Streetlife
     
    The campaign for the hearts and minds of high school kids was relentless. Dwight laid it all out at a board meeting (recorded on video tape):
    DWIGHT (wearing Cap’n Savage regalia): High school has to stay our main target. Much more important than the tiny tots.
     
    BOARD MEMBER: I suppose you have qualms about marketing to the tiny tots.
     
    DWIGHT: Naturally. Let’s face it,
they have very little disposable income
. We need to crack the teenmarket – the kids with real money.
For the teens, we emphasize how cigarettes can make you mysterious and interesting, and even improve your complexion and hair. Our provisional name is
Street-Life
. We’ll package them in a shiny black flip-top box – like black leather – with the name scrawled across it in Dayglo letters, kind of a cross between a spray-painted graffito and a neon sign. With a slogan like NOW YOU SMOKIN’!
     
    BOARD MEMBER: I like the slogan. How do we deliver our message?
     
    DWIGHT: We’ll hit them all day, beginning with the school buses. We’ll put ads all over the sides of buses. Just think of a kid standing waiting for the bus, and here it rolls in, bringing our message up at eye level.
     
    BOARD MEMBER: Is that legal?
     
    DWIGHT: Why not? It worked for 7-Up at Colorado Springs, why notfor us in other towns? And we also want to place more ads
inside
the bus. Like this (holds up a placard):
     
    NO SMOKING
B UT IF YOU COULD LIGHT UP,
WOULDN’T YOU RATHER TRY
S TREET L IFE ?
    BOARD MEMBER: What about kids who don’t ride the bus?
     
    DWIGHT (lifts the eyepatch to rub his eye): They probably smoke already. But don’t worry, we’re saturating the school, too. The idea is to place ads on every surface – the halls, lunchrooms, lockers, wherever kids look. Mirrors for instance: we’re placing mirrors with ads printed across them
inside
every kid’s locker door. What high school kid can pass up a mirror?
     
    BOARD MEMBER: Good thinking.
    What about the john? That has mirrors, and they probably do their smoking there, right?
     
    DWIGHT: Yes, the restrooms are special sanctuaries for our ads. The boys’ ads will show some cool, tough dudes smoking. We can use movie posters of James Dean, Humphrey Bogart, Robert Mitchum – and we can put speech balloons over their heads saying, “Don’t smoke in here. But if you do, try S TREET LIFE .” Or one in the stalls, saying, “Whatever you’re doing in here, you can do it better with S TREET LIFE .” In the girls’ john, the ad can show some anorexic model, more or less telling them “If I didn’t smoke S TREET LIFE , I’d weigh 400 pounds!”
     
    BOARD MEMBER: Ingenious! I suppose there’ll be lunchroom ads?
     
    DWIGHT: Naturally. There are so many surfaces in a lunchroom. We see huge billboards on the walls, ads embedded in table surfacesand trays, printedon napkins, and of course paper placemats.
     
    BOARD MEMBER: What about the gym?
     
    DWIGHT: We have to be careful with gyms and sports fields. The problem is, parents come to watch Junior play b-ball and notice the ads. Next thing you know, they’re phoning the school board. In any case, our real coverage will be in the classroom materials. Once you get the teacher to pass out your brochures as textbooks, it just doesn’t get any better. In a sense, the teacher is endorsing the product. The kids are in no position to argue, even if they wanted to. So we’re providing free book jackets, free tests, free charts, free books and videos, free everything. Even better than