Sponge

It's enough to make you sick, very sick.

‘Sponge’ is a remake of a 1979 television advertisement which was so successful in its day that tobacco lobbyists attempted to have it banned. In the ad, a sponge is used to demonstrate the amount of cancer-producing tar which goes into the lungs of a pack-a-day a smoker over the course of one year. A pair of hands wrings out a tar-blackened sponge and the tar can be seen overflowing into a beaker.

The campaign uses simple and powerful visuals to show people who smoke the negative effect smoking is having on their health, and prompt efforts to quit smoking. Research has proven that campaigns which employ graphic images and show negative health effects have the greatest impact on adult smokers.

The campaign will appear on television, radio, online and social media. For information on quitting smoking, check out our Ways to Quit page.