'Truth' Campaign Back In Business With Fact-Based Scare Tactics

The American Legacy Foundation, fresh out of its legal battles with the tobacco industry and in partnership with Arnold Worldwide, and Crispin Porter + Bogusky, has launched a new campaign entitled Infect Truth. The campaign consists of TV spots - airing on MTV, Comedy Central, G4 Tech TV, BET and others - and print as well as a host of digital elements including "Infections" in the form of screensavers, video, desktop themes, games and stickers all filled with juicy facts such as cigarettes containing sodium hydroxide, the same ingredient found in hair removal products. An email widget also allows people to send message written in back hair.

One TV spot, Sodium Hydroxide, covers the hair removal ingredient message. A second spot, Singing Cowboy depits a man riding a horse in New York who then stops to sing a song only to reveal he has a whole in his throat from a cancer-related laryngectomy and needs a voice box to sing. Both spots carry reaction shots (whether acted or original is unclear) of the crowd that display the disgust with the facts in these spots put forth.

One very interesting element of the campaign is an element called 1nfect.com, a URL people are encouraged to type into public computers that will display random and continual messages about tobacco companies and disgusting factoids such as "There's hydrogen cyanide in rat poison. The same stuff is in cigarette smoke" and "Pee contains Urea. So do cigarettes." The list goes on and none of the facts are pretty. It's a simple tool and one that's very easy to spread if people are inclined to do so.

You can check out all the campaign's elements here.