death via addiction

Buzz is that the entire SMART team relevant to the Addict campaign were laid off - from the pertinent VP to the copywriters.

Even the ad agency who did the creatives are supposedly banned from doing work for the company.

If all this is true, then it shows how culturally conservative our society is. A lot of people found the campaign distasteful because of the negative connotations of the word "addict" (it is said that SMART's first response to the initial protest was to release a new ad - "addicted to god").

The sad reality is that in an effort to jolt people into listening to their message, a lot of our colleagues over at the ad agencies resort to what is arguably tasteless.

Buti pa ang Globe.