In his classic comedy album No Cure For Cancer Denis Leary rants about smoking:

There’s a guy — I don’t know if you’ve heard about this guy, he’s been on the news a lot lately. There’s a guy, he’s English, I don’t think we should hold that against him, but apparently this is just his life’s dream because he is going from country to country. He has a Senate hearing in this country coming up in a couple of weeks. And this is what he wants to do. He wants to make the warnings on the packs bigger. Yeah! He wants the whole front of the pack to be the warning. Like the problem is we just haven’t noticed yet. Right? Like he’s going to get his way and all of the sudden smokers around the world are going to be going, "Yeah, Bill, I’ve got some cigarettes … HOLY SHIT! These things are bad for you?! Shit, I thought they were good for you! I thought they had Vitamin C in them and stuff!" You fucking dolt! Doesn’t matter how big the warnings are. You could have cigarettes that were called The Warnings. You could have cigarettes that come in a black pack with a skull and crossbones on the front called Tumors and smokers would be lined up around the block going, "I can’t wait to get my hands on these fucking things! I bet you get a tumor as soon as you light up! Numm Numm Numm Numm Numm!" Doesn’t matter how big the warnings are or how much they cost. Keep raising the prices, we’ll break into your houses to get the fucking cigarettes, ok? They’re a drug, we’re addicted, ok? Numm Numm Numm Numm Numm *wheeze*

Well, it looks like this English guy got his wish. Breitbart reports on the addition of graphic images to cigarette packaging in Britain. Beware about clicking that link: The image on this blog post is the far milder of the two shown in the story.

It does raise an interesting marketing issue, though: What if this concept were extended to other products? A package of Twinkies could carry an image of a morbidly obese person. Beer labels could have images of drunken vagrants on them. Boxes of sugary cereals could have pictures of kids with rotten teeth on them.

A trip to the supermarket would be a lot more interesting than it is now, that’s for sure.

Takeaway for marketers: Aren’t you glad you don’t work in the tobacco industry?

This entry was posted on Thursday, October 2nd, 2008 at 6:00 am and is filed under Marketing Stuff, Marketing Takeaways.