No one deserves to die ... Not even hipsters

It’s great to see a non-profit organization’s print campaign go “viral”, and that’s what happened today with Lung Cancer Alliance’s extremely shareable and darkly amusing No One Deserves To Die posters.

Variations on these themes below mysteriously appeared this week in bus shelters, phone booths, in transit stations, movie theatres and social media sites in 31 American cities like New York, Chicago, Washington, D.C., Boston, Atlanta, Philadelphia, Dallas and New Orleans. The reveal is explained in Lung Cancer Alliance’s media release:

“No one deserves to die from lung cancer; not cat lovers, not hipsters, the tattooed, not the one in five patients who has never smoked, or the three in five who have already quit, or the one in five who has been unable to quit. No one.

Breaking down the stigma barrier opens the door for a more constructive public discussion on how to reduce lung cancer’s mortality rate and all the tools are in place to do just that.”

Creative and microsite (NoOneDeservesToDie.org) was produced by Milwaukee’s Laughlin/Constable. When it comes to this issue, I’m reminded of the grassroots WTF Lung Cancer (Where’s the funding) movement, another use of attention-grabbing language to spread awareness of a misunderstood disease.

I also like how this campaign builds on trends we’re seeing in mental health outreach – eliminating the stigma associated with an illness.

Maybe the popularity of these images will change our knee-jerk reactions when hearing somebody has lung cancer, ie: “Oh, was he a smoker?”

Comments

i want to see how dedicated these people are… when are they going to start blocking cemeteries .... also everything living dies… period… so there for if youre living you eventually deserve to die… thats the price you pay to be alive… this propaganda makes logically no sense and thus has been proven to just be influence of dumb people who cant think for themselves… and by reposting this crap you are adding to their bullshit power…. want people to stop smoking ... give them the real facts the real scary facts about lung cancer…  and guess what ... i know those facts and i still smoke… its an addiction… thats kind of the point of an addiction… you know its bad and yet you are compelled to continue on the unhealthy behavior…

next time you think an ad is cute or quirky ... remember the movie “they live” and really see what that ad is saying to you ... buy consume obey follow ...