The Sunny Side of Sarcasm

[I wrote this for a class assignment, so forgive the stilted tone (although it was a very casual assignment)!]

The level of surrealism that the Sunny Side of Truth campaign has ascended to is blowing my mind. It makes me want to lay out exactly what is happening:
1. A tobacco company manipulation tactic is articulated by the truth kids.
2. The kids and/or animated unicorn go into a campy rendition of the manipulation.
3. One of the original truth kids expresses skepticism.
This results in a bizarre mix of feelings. Because however outré the campy part is, it’s still upbeat and kind of seductive. On the web site you can even download the sheet music, for example, of the song the unicorn sings: “Too much nicotine might make you sick, not enough, you might quit and walk away…They know the magical amount…” Maybe they put it in the key of B (with five sharps) to minimize how many kids could actually play it. It seems bizarre that the original truth kid tears down the straw man with his derisively skeptical “The magical amount?!” when there was no need to so whole-heartedly set up the straw man in the first place.

I’ve never seen a health campaign before that is so entrenched in sarcasm. The sarcasm of the “Sunny Side” becomes clearer in the Web site text: “…after all these years, we thought we’d give Big T a break and look on the sunnier side of things… Like, if 1 of every 3 youths who smoke will eventually die from it, that means 2 live! See how easy that is?” I think this might actually be effective for the target audience. Presumably kids who smoke use sarcasm as one of their defenses for not quitting. Appropriating sarcasm in the health campaign is a really interesting act of meeting them where they live. What if a kid is angry and contrary? He’s not going to care about some well-intentioned measured health message. In fact, he’ll dismiss it as cheesy. But these ads make it clear how big tobacco tactics are just as cheesy.

So it starts to make sense... The agency that came up with this is absolutely brilliant to bore into the “position” that sarcasm has in the teenage mind, and making it more allergic to smoking. (By position I am referring to a spot in the customer’s mind as expounded in Positioning: The Battle for Your Mind by Al Ries and Jack Trout.) They must have truly identified some teenage need, like, “Looking after my health is cheesy and I need not to be cheesy.” Now these ads are accentuating that smoking is also associated with cheesiness, the cheesy manipulation tactics of tobacco companies. What this creates is parity. By emphasizing the cheesiness of tobacco companies, the main differentiator (tobacco=cool/independent) disappears. They're both cheesy. And one will kill you.