Gotcha! I guess it’s a well-known fact by now that the above is fake. The person may be real - a model, no less - but make-up did wonders to her. The more I see this ad, the more I feel fascinated by the effects that were done especially on her mouth area.

My friends were talking about it the very first times the ad made its rounds in Singapore but somehow I didn’t catch it at all in whatever media it came out in. Not till this one fine day when I saw the exact face above flashed across my 22-inch TV. My instant reaction was “FUCK! There’s a ghost right in front of me!”

I was rooted where I am. I really was. My face nearly went as pale as hers (maybe it was) but luckily I was sane enough to realise that it was just a 30-sec TVC.

Soon the ad, or rather face, made its way up the boards in bus stops and local newspapers. Can someone tell me who this whole campaign is directed to again? Smokers you say? But they believe only 1 in 32359215 smokers will end up in that dreadful state. And many more are convinced that their face will remain perfectly normal for they are only social smokers.

Whatever happened to the miracles of plastic surgery that has been widely touted as the cure to cancer of imperfections?

So bottomline is, it doesn’t scare the living shit out of those smokers. Instead, children get nightmares. Even my mind would go haywire if I walk along this deserted street and suddenly my eyes made contact with this huge poster (you know what) at the bus stop.

Why ain’t this face on cigarette cartons or packs? Even in coffeeshops, beer ads are pleasant to the (wandering) eyes. Yet drinking has its harmful effects too. I rest my case.

I’m not saying we should be a sadistic society. Neither should we condemn smokers. But I just wanna diss the ad for being moronic and effectively ineffective.

Under the section of advertising goals, this would have probably failed rule #32.326.5 - ‘An ad should communicate to its target consumers effectively with the best possible usage of resources available’.