Truth Campaign: Anti-Smoking?

This Truth advertisement is geared towards keeping kids off cigarettes. However, it takes a critical eye to understand the true meaning of this advertisemet. "The Magical amount, not enough to kill you, but just enough to make it count" are the lyrics to the Disney-esque tune, and a child may not pick up on the sarcasm and humor of the immediate message. The child would have to view the ad critically to understand the true meaning. And oddly enough, children are not the first television viewers to pick up on sarcastic humor and underlying messages. When a child sees this message, they see cartoon animals singing a song about how cigarettes aren't that bad. We, as adults can see that this is not what Truth is saying, because of the comment at the end, "The magical amount? Are you serious?" But this comment isn't enough to undermine the majority of the advertisement. It can be broken down like this:
Of the 60 second ad--
Beginning; 10 seconds (17%), yelling through megaphone, hard to understand.
Main message; 44 seconds (73%) song with cartoon characters
End; 4 seconds (10%); closing.

As you can see, the majority of the message is not necessecarily anit-smoking.

Why are anti-smoking advertisements like this?
In 1998, legislature passed a bill that banned anti-smoking ads on billboards and required all big tobacoo companies to spend $300 million per year on anti-smoking ads for the next five years. (End 2003). However, since this requirement ceased in 2003, legislature has still been requiring tobacco companies to contribute money for more anti-smoking ads. Subsequently, the content of the anti-smoking ad is directly related to the amount of money contributed by big tobacco companies.
In closing, ads like this are not unintentional. Big tobacco companies look for ways to twist anti-smoking ads into ads of questionable integrity, and it would not be surprising to see more of this in the future.