Anti-smoking commercials tailored for teenagers
• Lyrics: 'Leave Um Where They're At'
By Michael Tsai
Advertiser Staff Writer
T eenagers and TV viewers may not know Mo Luv — but they know his lyrics.
"Wherever I go, kids are always pointing at me, going 'Leave um where they're at,'" says Luv, the 27-year-old rapper featured in a series of anti-smoking commercials for the state Department of Health. "Same thing when I go to clubs. I'm the Leave Um Where They're At Guy."
Hawai'i officials couldn't be happier. The series, based on a rap Luv composed for a radio ad, has succeeded where too many other teen-focused public-service spots have failed — it's delivered an important health message in a way that is credible and attractive to teens.
"It was exactly what we needed," says Julian Lipsher, coordinator for the state health agency's Tobacco Prevention and Education Project. "It's a great tune and (Luv) was very smart with the lyrics. It gets our message across."
"Leave Um Where They're At," soon to be reborn as a print ad, is actually one of several well-received ads that the Health Department has produced recently for teen audiences. Taking a cue from irreverent, in-your-face national ads, the Health Department and the agencies and production companies they contract have made a concerted effort to communicate with teen audiences on their own terms.
"What we've learned is that the authoritative figure wagging their finger and telling kids to 'just say no' doesn't work — thank you, Nancy Reagan," Lipsher said. "Teenagers will tune that out."
To get its messages across, health agencies have sought out advertising agencies and independent production companies that have a demonstrated feel for teen audiences.
"There's no single agency that we work with," Lipsher said of the tobacco project. "We want to work with people that have an understanding of our target audience, agencies that have people who are closer to the edge."
For the Pele Award-winning series "He's So Cool," "She's So Hot" and "Love," Laird Christianson Harris Advertising drafted a trio of romantic monologues dripping with irony and sarcasm — the comic modes of choice for older teens — to deliver a strong message about the effects of smoking.
"Impotence," the Milici Valenti Ng Pak spot that linked smoking to diminished sexual performance (and which featured the now-infamous drooping cigarette) played off teen insecurities in a humorous and inventive way.
With "Leave Um Where They're At," it's the edgy, aggressive rap style of Luv coupled with the MTV-style direction of James Sereno that made the ad ring true to its teen audience, and younger viewers as well, Lipsher says. (Lipsher is careful to note that there are distinct differences between teens in specific age ranges.)
"Nine- and 10-year-olds don't get irony and sarcasm," Lipsher says. "But they love 'Leave Um Where They're At.' This is a commercial that appeals to several different demographic groups."
MTV-style message
The spot grew out of a meeting between Lipsher and the I-94 Bomb Squad, which was serving as a focus group of convenience for an unrelated ad project. Lipsher closed the session by inviting the group to come up with their own ideas or suggestions. Luv, who was interning at the station, went home to see what he could do.
"I came up with about eight different slogans and 'leave um where they're at' just kind of stood out for me," he said.
Combining messages from the Health Department with his own take on the dirty business of tobacco, Luv composed a rap that deftly frames not smoking as an act of defiance against "multimillion-dollar businesses ... run by gray-suit idiots."
Luv also drew on his personal experience for the line, "Smoking is a choice and while you're puffin' and you're cruzin', think about the money and the health that you be losin.'"
"My mother used to smoke, and she eventually got cancer," Luv said. "She survived O.K., but I remember her before that, spending her last dime on cigarettes."
The Health Department ran the rap as a radio spot for about a year before Lipsher decided it might translate well into a MTV-style commercial. With the track already recorded, Lipsher turned the project over to Sereno's Kinetic Productions for the rest.
"I knew I wanted to speak directly to teenagers, and I needed to do that in a language that they would understand and accept," said Sereno, 36. "We didn't want to attack it like a message thing. We wanted it to be something cool that they could get into."
The original commercial was to include three vignettes that Sereno scripted, each tailored to a particular teen demographic: two boys experimenting with a pack of stolen cigarettes, a lone male teen buying a pack of cigarettes at a convenience store, and an older teen girl feeling peer pressure at a club.
Agreeing to work at a reduced rate, Sereno and his crew shot everything in one 16-hour marathon session.
"We ended up with so much good stuff that we felt we could make an entire commercial out of each individual scene," Sereno says.
And so they did. They presented Lipsher with the three single-theme commercials and one combination. Lipsher was thrilled.
Sereno showed a rough cut to his 16-year-old son, his ad hoc one-man focus group, who gave it the thumbs up — on one condition.
"He asked me if we were going to end with a big (Department of Health) logo in the corner," Sereno recalls. "He said that would be too 'fakey.' So the department logo doesn't come up, just a small, unobtrusive line about the sponsor."
Lipsher concedes that, as catchy as the song is, the message behind it might not immediately translate to behavior changes. But the fact that kids in elementary, middle and high schools are rapping the lyrics is still encouraging.
Last November, a Department of Health survey at a local mall found that 83 percent of teen respondents said they have seen or heard an anti-smoking ad recently.
"So we know they're at least seeing and hearing the message," Lipsher said. "Hopefully the message will be supported in the schools and in the community in well-funded and sustained ways that will ultimately result in (nonsmoking) rates ahead of the national average."
Partnering with businesses
Much of the advertising the Tobacco Prevention and Education Project handles falls under the category of counter-marking, i.e., advertising that directly challenges the content of other advertising.
Lipsher said his department spends about $850,000 annually in production and placement of advertisements. That pales in comparison to the $23 million tobacco companies spend in Hawai'i each year.
"These translate to impressions and by the time kids reach their teens, they've probably had thousands of impressions from ads portraying smoking as a widely accessible thing that well-dressed adults do while they're out having fun.
"We can't go toe to toe, dollar for dollar with them," he says. "But it's important to get that counter-message out and to come up with effective ways of getting our message through to our target population."
Other health agencies also are paying close attention to how they communicate with teen audiences.
Cynthia Cabot, education coordinator for the Healthy Hawaii Initiative, said six radio spots for the initiative's Start Living Healthy campaign were adapted for broadcast over the youth-oriented FM 104.3 Xtreme Radio.
"We work with the station and our agency (Starr Seigle Communications) and the ads go through every possible hand on our end," Cabot says. "We have parents of teens, and some folks who are younger, who can tell us if it sounds right."
Increasingly, state agencies are relying on the expertise of businesses that work exclusively with teen audiences to get their messages heard.
For example, the state Office of Elections recently approached Sassy/G Magazine for assistance in developing a program to educate high school students about voting. Sassy/G in turn used its internal resources to pull together the Liberty Tour 2002, a traveling public-service party that visited 34 schools at the end of the last school semester.
"When you're working with teenagers, whatever you do has to be fun, hip and cool," says Sassy/G editor in chief Jody Shiroma. "We ran the entire promo. We brought sound systems and games to the schools during lunch time. It was all elective. They could come or not come, and that was important."
'Key is to keep it real'
Armed with a list of talking points, host Kutmaster Spaz and magician Kaulana — both Sassy/G employees — used the events to deliver voter registration information in straight teenspeak.
"The response was insane," Shiroma said. While final figures are still being tallied, Shiroma estimates that roughly 3,000 students age 16 or older registered to vote during the tour.
"Just like in business or marketing or anything, you have to be able to relate to your target consumer," Shiroma says. "If it sounds like an advertisement, they're not going to pay attention. The key is to keep it real."
Marvin Jastillana, who runs Go Magazine with his wife Norise, says teens are generally more sophisticated than they were a generation ago.
"Before if you were a geek, that's just what you were," he says. "Now, it's cool to know a lot about electronics or to be interested in poetry. As far as advertising or marketing, teenagers respond better when they're being offered something with substance in a way that's also amusing — they want to be amused all the time."
They also love a good hook, Jastillana says.
"Leave Um Where They're At" is really popular because the rap isn't cheesey like you see in some commercials, and because it has a great slogan. ... You've got to have a slogan for them to remember you."
• • •
'Leave Um Where They're At'
By Mo Luv
Hey yo
This message is to let all my peeps know what they should be doing with tobacco products
What's that?
Jus' leave um where they're at
Before you pull um out the pack man
Leave um where they're at
And if your friends think you're whack yo
Leave um where they're at
When your body starts to hurting and you don't know what's the answer not knowing that you're dying by sticks of lung cancer
Leave um where they're at
Now smoking not the cool one
Leave um where they're at
And if you're smoking you're a fool son
Smoking is a choice and while you're puffin and you're cruzin think about the money and the health that you be losing
You think about buying
Leave um where they're at
Little kids you wanna try um
Leave um where they're at
Three hundred million people dying
Leave um where they're at
Tobacco company always lying
Leave um where they're at
These multimillion-dollar businesses are run by gray-suit idiots who focus advertisements on our inner-city kids
Don't listen use your mind you're in charge of yourself
Brought to you by the Hawaii state Department of Health
Yo, you think they got the message?
I don't know but let's tell them again
Before you're breath starts to stink
Leave um where they're at
