Nicotine as a Lifestyle Drug

[elfs]

Have you seen the Nicorette Gum ad with the shark? This one? It's funny in its own right, although maybe a bit gruesome in its suggestiveness.

But the weird thing is, the message I take away from the ad is not just that Nicorette will help you deal with cravings, but that nicotine will wake you up. If I was a smoker, this ad would say "we'll help you quit."

But I'm not a smoker. I don't understand the cravings for nicotine. I even managed to drop from nearly 600mg to now less that 50mg of caffeine a day (and that's mostly from chocolate and iced tea), and even on that I'm tapering off to nothing. To me, a non-user, it seems to saying: "Nicotine is like caffeine. It wakes you up. It makes you more aware and alive. Even if you're not a smoker, maybe Nicorette is for you."

Uh, no. Nicotine, even as a gum, is one of the hardest drugs of all to quit. Not doing that one anytime soon.

Comments

[dip-thong.livejournal.com]

To me, the ad shows me how completely distracting a nicotene craving can be, and the idea is that the lozenges free you up to take care of other important things in your life, like sharks. Him repeating "Cigarette. Cigarette. Cigarette." over and over shows me that his initial state is craving, and that after he gets rid of the recurring thought, he then is back to a normal state.

[elfs.livejournal.com]

Here's the thing: I don't listen to ads. I habitually hit the mute button. The first few times I saw the ad, I saw it without sound. And that's how I got the reading I did.

Advertisers know that people fast forward, blip, or mute ads. I don't know if my read was unique or not, but without the sound my impression was "generically tired and distracted until he got nicotine."