Commercial Campaigns

Recently, as I was watching television a commercial came on the grabbed my attention. It was a commercial that was somewhat like the movie that I had previously wrote about, Pay It Forward. In this commercial, a girl grabbed a pizza delivery man by the arm before he was about to go out into the street and just as she did so, a car came whizzing by. This unknown girl saw the car coming whereas the pizza man didn't, thus her being his Good Samaritan. The commercial goes on with the pizza man helping a stranger, that stranger helping another stranger, another stranger helping the unknown girl, and back to the scene where the unknown girl pulls the pizza man out of the way. It turns out that this was a CocaCola commercial, trying to spread our same idea that everyone should lend a helping hand. These helping hands make the world turn as we see in this CocaCola ad, where what goes around comes around in the best of ways.

After seeing this commerial, it made me think of what other ads there are out there that deal with helping other out. Certain commercials that I think are good that are out on the television are the Above the Influence campaign(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Above_the_Influence). It is obvious that Good Samaritans are behind these advertisements, trying to make it so that in such a challenging and influential world today, youth and teens will stay away from drugs and alcohol. In one advertisement, we see a boy wheeling a stand-up mirror from his house and into his cafeteria at school. He places the mirror in front of his used-to-be best friend and his friend looks into the mirror, seeing his worn out reflection. The tagline for this commercial is "Drugs and alcohol change you," and this commercial gets the point across to the youth of America that it not only changes you personally and emotionally, but also physically and if you stay "above the influence" you won't have to worry about letting yourself, and others down. You can view commercials like these and read more into this subect on http://www.abovetheinfluence.com/.

Another television advertisement that I think is good to be out in the media is the Truth campaign(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Truth_(advertising)). This is an anti-smoking campaign that is aimed towards the youth of America. The come across with mind blowing statistics and truths that leave you thinking. I believe this ties in with our theme of Good Samaritans because it is campaigns like these that try to prevent more people from smoking, which they are not only harming themselves but they are also harming others and our environment. There is a really creative and interesting site http://www.whudafxup.com/?ref=truthsite, if you are interested in learning more about this specific campaign ad. As for me, after looking around on this site, as a college student, I found some interesting facts that I think people of all ages would find interesting:

43.9% of young adults who are of college age, but do not attend college, smoke.

Female college studnets are more likely to smoke daily than male college students.

25.7% of college students smoke.

Other interesting facts that are on this site are:

Hydrogen cyanide is used in prison executions. It is also found in cigarettes.

Smoking kills more thatn 9 times more people per year than car accidents.

Every 6.5 seconds, someone dies from smoking-related diseases.

You can find other facts like these on http://www.whudafxup.com/?ref=truthsite.

Overall, I think it is important that there are people out there who develop campaigns, commercials, websites, anything that gets a good message across to the youth and teens today. From a catch Coca Cola commercial to more controversial anti-drug ads, their are surprisingly more people in the media, than we think, that we can call Good Samaritans.