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Kelvin Murray's latest ad is an anti-ad, alerting parents to the dangers of smoking at home. But, finds Diane Smyth, illustrating that simple concept took a lot of creative thought
Showing on a poster near you is a very creepy image. It pictures a young child smoking, something shocking enough in its own right. But it also reveals something even weirder - an adult smoker's arm grafted onto the body of the child.
The poster is the Roy Castle Lung Cancer Foundation's latest anti-smoking ad, publicising the fact that secondary smoking at home hospitalises 17,000 children per year in the UK. 'We wanted to illustrate the idea that when people smoke at home, they're force-feeding their children cigarettes,' says Nick Pringle, one of the creative directors behind the ad. 'We made something slightly revolting to make people stop and think.'
Pringle came up with idea with Clark Edwards, his long-term creative partner and colleague at Clemmow Hornby Inge ad agency (better-known as CHI). As often happens with charity campaigns, it wasn't created directly for the client. Instead it was conceived of as a creative project, then offered to the Roy Castle Trust for free. 'So although the Foundation knew what we were working on, they didn't have input into its creation,' says Pringle.
Pringle and Edwards worked on a few concepts before hitting their final idea, rejecting kids with ashtray mouths, for example, as just too revolting. Advertising photographer Kelvin Murray was their natural first...