This Ink Is Made of Gunk From the Lungs of Dead Smokers

Thai Foundation and BBDO Bangkok Found a Shocking Way to Illustrate Cigarettes' Harmful Effects

Published On
Mar 30, 2015
The Message from the Lungs

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Everybody knows smoking hurts the body. But this campaign from the Thai Health Promotion Foundation turned that abstract knowledge into a gruesome reality check: It made ink out of the blackened substance inside smokers' lungs and gave it to people to paint with.

The foundation and BBDO Bangkok cooperated with the Faculty of Medicine, Chulalongkorn University, to extract the blackened substance from the lungs of smokers who had donated their bodies to science. (The lungs were too damaged to be used for anything else, BBDO said.) The jars of ink were set out in public places, where people could paint anti-smoking messages.

The campaign got 100,000 shares on social media. And while it ran in March and April, enrollment in the Thai Health Promotion Foundation's anti-smoking programs jumped 500% compared to the previous year.