Tumorous cigarettes – and the rest of the year in shockvertising

What's bulbous, comically gruesome, and worth around £2.7m? The answer is not, in fact, Boris Johnson, but the government's new anti-smoking campaign, unveiled last Friday. The "hard hitting" initiative is the first graphic anti-smoking government campaign to run in the UK since images of fat-dripping cigarettes made the nation feel uneasily queasy in 2004. After an eight-year hiatus from grimagery you'd think the Department of Health bods might now have something really quite sickening up their sleeves. So what is it? Well, explains the chief medical officer, Prof Dame Sally Davies: "People will see a man smoking and then a cancer growing out of the cigarette." Um, excuse me while I am grossly underwhelmed. If Davies really thinks a CGI tumour is shocking then I hope to God she never looks at 4chan. In a world where you can watch execution videos on YouTube and torture-porn is a mainstream movie genre, it's getting increasingly difficult to shock people. And so, apart from a few of the usual suspects such as Peta, shock tactics have fallen somewhat out of favour as in advertising. As one New York Times critic yawned: "There's something hopelessly middle class about shock." But, let's face it, hopelessly middle class is what Guardian contributors do best. So here's a brief rundown of the year in shockvertising. The inevitable Photoshock fail While cigarettes lead to mutations, sugary drinks lead to amputations. At least that's according to the logic of a recent New York health department campaign about the perils of sugary soda. Illustrated with an image of an obese amputee, the blunt messaging was that binge fizzy-drinking will leave you legless. As it transpired, however, the man in the ad hadn't lost a limb to a Dr Pepper habit that had resulted in crippling type 2 diabetes. Rather, he'd lost it to Photoshop. When this was vociferously pointed out shock fizzled into sham and the campaign lost all credibility. The moral of this sad story is that the New York health department should probably hire a better ad agency. Another awful thing from People for the Erotic Treatment of Asparagus Below are a few verbatim reasons why NBC once rejected a proposed Super Bowl ad from Peta: – Pumpkin from behind between legs – Screwing herself with broccoli (fuzzy) – Rubbing asparagus on breast More than enough said. Peta ads are one out of the outstanding examples of shock for the sake of shock with zero link to behaviour change. I'm pretty sure most women aren't going to switch to an animal-free diet so they can have a bit of sexy time with some broccoli. Not to mention that while the Peta vegetable-sex obsession has become a predictably unpleasant motif, the organisation really outdid itself this year with some truly awful ads referencing domestic violence. The surprisingly delightful death jingle Shock doesn't have to be all blood and gore. Sometimes it's simply about surprising people into a reassessment of their perceptions. Take, for example, Metro Trains Melbourne's recent safety campaign: an animated video called Dumb Ways to Die. Rather than employ scare tactics the video engages people with its messaging by making it darkly humorous. It's three minutes of cartoon characters being killed off by careless behaviour that has managed to notch up more than 35m views and spawn a karaoke version. Karaoke, by the way, can be counted as a dumb way to die in the Phillipines, where renditions of "My Way" have led to the deaths of at least six people in the past decade. Which is, well, shocking. The predictable bit of sexism Shame is fast becoming the new shock. Dumb Ways to Die, for example, makes the point that your careless behaviour isn't just dangerous, it makes you look like an idiot. By using animation, however, the film avoided picking on any one demographic. Unlike, cough cough, Network Rail who, in a bid to get commuters to take extra care over the holidays, released CCTV images of passengers drunkenly stumbling through Euston station. Except these images all happened to be of drunk female passengers. Because, yeah, men never get drunk and travel by train. That really shocking moment when ads are replaced by actions A shocking ad is all very well, but ultimately the most effective way to change people's behaviour is by changing policy. Australia has recently done just that by passing legislation ensuring cigarettes are now sold in identical unbranded packets. The legislation comes despite many attempts by tobacco companies to block it – about the surest sign you can get that it will probably be effective. The UK would do well to Australia's lead in this regard. Because the most shocking anti-smoking adverts these days don't involve CGI tumours. They involve standing up to Big Tobacco.