Check out the new ad highlighted on the Wonkette website from the New Zealand-chapter of Action on Smoking and Health - which uses some pretty explosive 9/11 imagery to make its point about the dangers of smoking.
The ad shows two smoking cigarettes set up to look like the burning Twin Towers, with the tag line: "Terrorism-related deaths since 2001: 11,337. Tobacco-related deaths since 2001: 30,000,000."
Wonkette, along with the advertising blog copyranter, rightly question whether the ad, while powerful, is appropriate. But Wonkette only makes matter worse, in our opinion, by slapping an inflammatory and misleading headline referring to "America's Mayor" and former GOP presidential candidate Rudy Guiliani on its item about the ad.
"Guiliani apparently an Ad Man Now" the Wonkette headline reads. It goes on to compare Guiliani's touting his performance on 9/11 on the campaign trail to the anti-smoking organization using imagery alluding to the attacks to promote its message.
It's a fair point -- whether references to 9/11 are ever appropriate, even when the message - such as anti-smoking - is positive. But Guiliani had nothing to do with the ad, or the organization, so we have a question for Wonkette:
When is it appropriate to goose up a headline using the name of a well-known and controversial former mayor and presidential candidate to get more hits on an item?
-- Karla Schuster in NYC
Update: Ben Youdan, the director of the anti-smoking organization in New Zealand for which the ad was developed, explains in an email that ad hasn't run, and isn't going to after all. Turns out, the ad was inadvertently put up no the web by the ad agency that created it. His full statement appears after the jump.
Statement from New Zealand Action on Smoking and Health
"ASH New Zealand had been working on a provocative and challenging campaign to be launched later this year in New Zealand only. The campaign has not actually been run. It was released onto the web by mistake by the creative agency DDB. We are no longer intending to run the campaign.
"When considering the creative we knew that it would be highly thought provoking and would generate anger. Terrorist attacks in New York and other major cities have understandably caused outrage in us all as they very publically claim thousands of lives. Tobacco company’s products claim 5.4 million lives across the globe every year. Imagine 15,000 people dropping dead every day. ASH aims to challenge how we detach ourselves from the smokers lives lost behind closed doors, and show why these too are worthy of outrage."