Source: nytimes.com
Author: Jennifer B. Lee

The city’s Department of Health and Mental Hygiene — never an agency to shy away from using vivid, even grisly, images to combat what it sees as public health scourges, namely soda and cigarettes — is unveiling a new television advertisement to discourage New Yorkers from smoking.

This one focuses on the emotional toll of tobacco. It features a British man, Anthony, who is dying of lung and throat cancer, but wheezes out that he is looking forward to seeing his daughter during the holidays. The next frame reveals that Anthony died 10 days later, without having seen his daughter again.

City Room wondered how New York City viewers could end up watching a British man in an antismoking ad. After all, the other antismoking stars of late have had New York ties: Ronaldo Martinez, a one-time Bronx resident who uses a device to speak from his throat, and Marie, also of the Bronx, a woman with numerous amputations.

It turns out there are a number of central online clearinghouses for antitobacco advertising where health departments and nonprofit organizations can essentially share their outreach efforts. The two most prominent exchanges are run by the Centers for Disease Controls and Prevention and World Lung Foundation. For example, the ad featuring Mr. Martinez, which was originally developed for Massachusetts, is also being used in Australia.

“There is so much effective media being produced throughout the world,” said Elizabeth Kilgore, acting assistant commissioner of tobacco control at the health department. “We take advantage of it. I personally look very often to see if there is anything new.”

The new ad featuring Anthony, which began on Monday and will run for three weeks, was originally produced for Britain’s health department. New York City’s health department discovered it on the World Lung Foundation’s site about six months ago, Ms. Kilgore said. While the licensing fees to run these ads can vary greatly, the health department is paying less than $1,000, she said.

Local officials have sometimes had to tweak foreign ads, even if they were produced in English. For example, one ad featured people with a strong Australian lilt. “We voiced those over with an American accent,” Ms. Kilgore said.

However, the city decided not to do such a voice-over with the new British-made ad. “With Anthony, we thought his voice was so effective, because you can hear the illness in his voice,” she said. “In this case, we thought it was very effective at not dubbing it over.”