The purpose of "The Real Cost" campaign is to educate teens about the harmful effects of tobacco use. Their goal is to reduce the number of teens who experiment with smoking and become lifelong tobacco users. This ad was an educational ad released in order to try and prevent smoking in the United States. The commercial for "The Real Cost" of smoking is trying to convince the audience of the real effects of smoking and help people to avoid smoking by using a shocking pathos using children, and a logos of showing actual health concerns of smoking. All of this rides the new healthy wave that America has been consumed with recently.
This commercial is targeted toward teens as its audience to prevent them from being adult smokers. This is found from the company deciding to use a teen to buy the cigarettes, instead of an adult, because teens will relate more to a person their age than someone older. Teens make an easier connection to another teen, rather than to adults that are used in other anti-smoking commercials that just have an adult saying,"This happened to me, don't let it happen to you." This connection is from the rebellious attitude that teens have towards adults and they would rather hear the knowledge and influence of other teens. The creature in this ad represents the real dangers associated with smoking a cigarette. It is incredibly disturbing and looks dangerous. These two main ideas are used to pull in the audience and to try and shock them into not purchasing cigarettes. The use of shock advertising is very effective in society today because of the fact of how much it can stick in someone's head and cause brand recall. People would not often see the creature on the television going into the teen's mouth. Furthermore, in today's society, attraction is everything. If you can create a vibrant commercial that entertains the audience instead of just informing them, it can help with making the audience remember their product, or in this case, to not smoke.