“surgeon General’s Warning Quitting Smoking Now Greatly Reduces Serious Risks to Your Health.

“SURGEON GENERAL’S WARNING: Quitting Smoking Now Greatly Reduces Serious Risks to Your Health.” You may have ever seen this sort of antismoking message in any types of media. If you are a smoker, what do you feel when you see the antismoking message, and, on the contrary, what do you feel if you are an antismoker? One night in this April, while starring anywhere without a focus in my room, I saw the cigarette box on the table and got a smoking urge. I came out of my room and went to the backyard with a cigarette and lighted up the cigarette after unconsciously saw the warning message on the cigarette box. After a few seconds, I reminded of the similar antismoking message that I have seen in military hospital when I was in army. At that time in the military hospital, I felt disgusted because there were both the warning message and image of rotten lung. I thought that smoking was fatal to human’s body and desire to smoke ran away even though I was a smoker at that time as well. I was surprised that the smoking urge decreased when I saw the antismoking message with a visual message and surprised that I unconsciously ignored the warning message which was just written in the letters without any visual message. Then, I got a question about the effects of antismoking advertisements on smoker’s reaction and found that the effect of antismoking advertisements is different depending on emotional factors in advertisements and found that antismoking advertisements also have a contrary effect that cause smoking urge, which is called boomerang effects.

First, the effects of antismoking advertisements on smoking urge appear in positive framing advertisements, on the other hand, rarely do appear in negative framing advertisements. A report by Cho (2008) explains that the antismoking advertisements which convey positive messages are more influential than the advertisements which convey negative messages. Cho states that customers’ direct and indirect emotional reaction is an important part in the positive framing advertisements. Similarly, there is another research that states the relationship between emotional factors and the effectiveness of antismoking advertisements. The study mainly argues that smokers who are exposed to more highly emotional and personal testimonial advertisements are more likely to have quit smoking.

...