Paul from Paris

Last week, an ad campaign made front-page news. Widely reported in France –in the press, on television– the story was soon carried in papers of record abroad.

The campaign consisted of a series of visuals that depicted young people, male and female, engaged in a sex act with an older man.

The campaign purportedly showed that using tobacco is a sign of submission and naïveté, illustrated by the tag line: to smoke is to be a slave to tobacco.

Who are they trying to kid? That was my initial reaction. My thinking: the message would persuade none but offend many (if only because the association with tobacco and pedophilia makes sex play look bad).

Indeed, French health minister Roselyne Bachelot called the campaign “inappropriate” and “counter-productive”, and junior minister for family affairs Nadine Morano said the campaign was “profoundly shocking and intolerable”.

Advertising is a self-regulating profession in France; its regulator, commonly called by its acronym, ARPP, promptly discovered that the campaign violated several guidelines advertisers are supposed to follow (about visuals that are degrading or humiliating, or that show domination or exploitation).

The campaign turned out to be a bluff, an effort to generate buzz. As ARPP’s director general was reported as saying in Le Monde, “There was no advertising campaign.” According to the campaign’s organizer, “This campaign was never intended to be massively shown to the general public.” A pseudo-campaign, it recalls individuals efforts to generate buzz with phantom campaigns.

Seen through the dust of controversy, the most recent remarks seem to be not totally accurate. The ARPP’s general director, as reported by Le Monde, points out that “15,000 cards [with campaign images] were distributed in Paris area bars and nightclubs”; the same article mentions that campaign ads were carried in Entrevue and Choc, two publications that court controversy and adult readers. And there is no wider audience than front-page or prime-time news.

France long enjoyed a close relationship with tobacco and, for many years, treated smoking liberally.

Attitudes and behaviors have changed. European integration, a hygienic mindset, tax policies, and demographic shifts all contributed to the changes. Today, France counts about 15 million smokers. Arguably, this is a lot for a country with 60 million inhabitants.

Public health authorities concentrate on smoking among youth. Smokers are in the minority among every age bracket, but the proportion of smokers is highest in the 20-25 age bracket, followed by those age 15-19. In order to reach this population, authorities and advertising agency have created several campaigns. Many are banal, ineffective, or insulting. But some are clever.

My favorite is a spot by French director Yvan Attal, which aired shortly before smoking was prohibited in restaurants, bars, and nightclubs. The spot –aired on public television in prime time– grabs your attention by depicting a couple having sex in a storeroom. A voiceover warns: “Caroline’s playing with her life. She doesn’t know that she’s contracting a fatal disease.” Then comes the surprise: the disease has nothing to do with sex. Instead, every day Caroline “absorbs toxic substances”, that stay in the air “hours after their emission”, because she works in the nightclub, cleaning up. The spot ends with the tagline: “let’s not take any more risks”.

I like the spot because Attal managed to put a positive spin on the smoking ban by borrowing a page from safe sex campaigns and by directing concern to others.

Attal has just put out another anti-smoking spot. It’s equally creative. Set in a management meeting, it presents a problem: how to dispose of 60 tons of toxic waste? One manager suggests waste treatment, rejected as too expensive. Another suggests burying the wastes in a vacant lot, rejected as outdated and sure to incur political wrath. Another suggests dumping the waste abroad, rejected out of hand by the boss, now irritated, who asks whether anyone has an idea that’s “simple, economical, and efficient”. Then another manager speaks up: dispose of the waste by having people swallow it. The boss expresses skepticism. But the manager explains that marketing people can persuade youth that this is a great idea. The clincher: this won’t cost the company a cent, because young people will pay for this scheme.

I like the spot because Attal plays on the cynicism teens harbor towards the adult world, shown here to be worse than they had feared. Just as the earlier spot drew on safe sex themes, the new spot draws on strongly negative attitudes towards toxic waste.

I remember when French elevators –ridiculously small, wood-sided, with iron grillwork doors– had interior ashtrays. I remember too that people made use of them.

Smoking in an elevator! Who could imagine such a thing today? In the years since I moved to Paris, I’ve seen smoking forbidden in elevators, hospitals, airplanes, trains, offices, restaurants, cafés, bar, and nightclubs. Surprisingly, I’ve seen the prohibitions observed overwhelmingly.

If you’re a smoker in France, where can you smoke? At home. Maybe in a car, except that recent models now come without lighters or ashtrays. I’ve seen a surprising number of cyclists and motorcyclists smoking. Tobacco enthusiasts can also smoke in the street, or in a park.

To me, this last option seems incongruous, even bizarre: why go into nature to smoke a cigarette? But it happens all the time. Parks are one of the few public spaces remaining where smokers are left undisturbed (although passersby will hasten to add that they are disturbed by the smoke).

This unobtrusive sign caught me eye. It sits on ground level in a grassy part of a well-known square in central Paris. Taking a formal tone, it informs smokers that ashtrays are available at the center of garden and requests that they use them; it adds an appeal that doing so will make the gardeners’ work easier.

Around the sign, two reactions. The first, in black marker, reads “Thank you” (in French), punctuated by a heart. The second is a collection of cigarette butts, strewn around the sign. I wonder: are they there accidentally, or purposefully?