As any four-year-old can tell you, farts are hilarious. Which is why we’re not sure whether this Canadian anti-smoking campaign is adequately conveying the seriousness of the problem it’s trying to tackle in the above ad spot, which equates “social smoking” with “social farting.” But boy, is it funny. (Warning: Video contains gross farting sounds and is probably NSFW, especially if you work with a lot of four-year-olds.)
The public service announcement from the Ontario Ministry of Health is part of its “Quit the Denial” campaign, which aims to get people to give up cigarettes, according to Adweek.
The TV spot has one young woman rejecting the idea that she’s a “farter,” but instead calls herself a “social farter,” saying, “Just because I fart at parties now and then, it doesn’t make me a farter.”
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The young woman is, of course, in denial — like people who claim to be “social smokers” and insist they’re not addicted, Adweek explains.
The Quit the Denial campaign is from advertising agency BBDO’s Toronto offices and directed by the Perlorian Brothers – the same Canadian duo who worked on Volkswagen’s Super Bowl Game Day teaser “Get Happy.”
Although the campaign’s TV spots are a change from the typical anti-smoking ads – there’s another one called the “social nibbler” – critics have said the videos don’t convey the right message, the Daily Mail reported. Jezebel commented that the ad is “clever,” but asked, “Doesn’t it kinda make social farting look kinda…cool? And Adweek, in a fairly epic attempt at flatulence-related punnery, wondered if the spot was “too light and insubstantial, lacking substance—like, oh I don’t know, a passing wind, perhaps?”
