Campaign Failures

[the following is the personal opinion of serge]

Have you noticed that even with allocating a whole-shit-load of budget to any campaign such as the Tak Nak (don’t want) and the Road Courtesy Campaign done by our malaysian goverment, it will end up in near complete failure ? Think about it.

Why does the campaign fail ? Why ? There are several factors that has caused this failure, serge isn’t sure if they all add up, but who knows.

Let’s take for example the Tak Nak Campaign. This campaign which began last year is the goverments initiative to curb/stop the growing spread of teenage smokers. This campaign in his opinion, should be applauded as the trend of teenage smokers has increased steadily . You can check the stats from here

The above campaign, was placed on billboards, newspapers, magazines, television and even the radio. The campaign ran in a way that didn’t make the viewers think “OH ITS BAD… I MUST STOP“, those advertisements were more like “THAT’S SO COOL !“. Seriously, those campaigns were hilarious and some didn’t an impact. The only one that made an impact was the billboard advertising of the tar in a smoker’s lungs.

The tobacco industry is a very lucrative industry. One of the main reasons serge believes that the Tak Nak Campaign failed is because of this. With an industry pumping in funds to a nation, esspecially a nation that is still young… who wouldn’t want that ? Revenue is made through this.

Besides that, this companies knows thus mindset of their customers. Thus they manipulate. By projecting a feel good theme in it’s tobacco products the user will also in one way or another feel the same way as well. Take for example Salem cigarettes, this company potrays the smooth and cool feeling. For Malboro it’s the look of ruggedness, and as for Dunhill…they epitomized quality,excellence.

The human psyche is one that, if you can give the person something that will make him/her feel good and make the person feel important, that person will capture that something and keep it and not let it go. No matter how bad it is to ones health, as long as their pride is intact. They will keep it.

With that said, what do you think caused campaigns in malaysia to fail ?