The purpose of Truth is simple: it is an informational campaign aimed at creating the generation that ends smoking tobacco once and for all - teen smoking in particular. The basic idea behind Truth is is the title of the campaign itself... the point is to spread the truth about how harmful tobacco is. The campaign is aimed at both current smokers and non-smokers. They make it clear that they aren’t trying to criticize people's choices, but that they are here to create a much needed change away from big tobacco. The campaign is centered around several main ways of ending smoking.
- Their major goal is to EXPOSE big tobacco’s lies
- They focus on finding “new FUN ways to do what no generation has ever done before- END SMOKING”
- They aim to end smoking by simply presenting the harsh FACTS about how dangerous tobacco use is.
- They aim at finding CREATIVE ways to combat big tobacco’s constantly evolving tactics.
- They aim to create STRENGTH IN NUMBERS by creating a generation of educated individuals that can come together to end smoking.
- They focus on a CALL TO ARMS, asking each individual to help spread the truth about tobacco.
CONTEXT The Truth’s campaign, since it is focused on a younger audience that is growing up with technology and the internet as a huge part of their lives, is centered around the web. They incorporate songs, videos, art, facts, and charts into their very modern, intuitive, and eye-catching website. Many people may first find out about the campaign (at least I did) through the huge amount of commercials they show on TV channels - channels like Comedy Central that have a huge young audience. Truth wages war on big tobacco with their combination of TV commercials and a strong website geared toward appealing to teenagers - they really do attack big tobacco from all available platforms. AUTHOR As thetruth.com is a wesbite a specific author isn’t clearly listed - they is likely a huge team of writers and designers that contribute to the various aspects and types of media that can be found on the website. The larger author, if you will, is the American Legacy Foundation, as they are the sponsor of the informational campaign against tobacco. GENRE Truth fits into several different genre categories. It is MULTIMODAL as it incorporates videos, words, images, art, facts, numbers, charts... anything that you could possibly think of, Truth is doing it. It is a website. It is TV commercials. Above all the genre is that of an informational campaign - to be specific a 21st century information campaign aimed at ending smoking. The fact that it is a 21st century campaign is relevant because this is really the first century that has fully understood the dangers of smoking and is one of the first generations that has all of the facts at their disposal - largely thanks to the Truth informational campaign. | AUDIENCE Truth is very clear about who their target audience is: TEENS. Truth comes out and says that teen smoking is at an all time low (7% of teens) and that together, we can help to get that percentage all the way down to 0% of teens who smoke cigarettes. Truth has several collaborations on their main page that clearly are geared toward a young, teenage audience. They collaborated with electronic producer NGHTMRE, who’s trap music is hugely popular amongst a young audience, to create a song about how lame smoking is. In this collaboration they even enlisted the “fans” themselves to submit the lyrics for the song. Truth also collaborated with Vans to create a shoe for the campaign. The shoe was designed by artist Kevin Lyons and features a design printed on the shoe in a very street-styled art. Overall Truth is trying, and I would argue successfully, to approach the teenage generation and to actually make not smoking cool by doing these various collaborations. |