Forbidden Fruit

Did you know smoking is bad for you? Of course you did. It's printed on all the cigarette packets and seen all over the place on posters. Perhaps some of us still don't know how bad it is to get fat because the hanburgers don't come out of the grill pan with a label saying so, nor does the other fatty food.

The experts recently assured us that ''Bad or inadequate nutrition is a health risk factor more serious than tobacco (possibly these experts are smokers!), as the impact of it is more grave in many systems. Well then do we put warning labels on everything? Or not?

What about cars? The fume coming out of the exhaust pipes are no better than cigarette smoke surely. Do we put up posters saying 'Driving is harmful to your health'? Or perhaps we could also warn about working? The work related stress is responsible for heart diseases and accidents caused by vascular blockage in the brain and all that. And excess of age? The source of many ills. Yes, friends, old age could provoke impotence.

Twenty years or so ago, there was a new brand of cigarettes on sale in London called 'Death' . The packet is jet black, the only decoration consisted in a skeleton with 2 crossed bones. The promoters' intention was to discourage smoking amongst teenagers (so they said. I say nobody invents something, put it on the market, and hopes to encourage people to ignore it!) And, (yes, you guess it), it sold like hot cakes, especially to the young who all considered it rather cool and it became their favourite brand. So much so that they had to retrieve the lot and stopped it's production. Short lived, but huge profit and priceless advertising. I bet they expected the outcome right from the beginning, as the Spanish idiom says 'Ya ha hecho su agosto' (Literally: they have by then made their August; meaning having made their pile, fun, profit, etc.) Or, in English: Forbidden fruit.

It's what is called reversed advertising. The more dangerous or evil you shout about something, the more appetising it becomes for the young and curious. Haven't we all done something we are specifically warned or forbidden to do? I did. Still do them.

Tags:forbiddenfruitt,reversedadvertising

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