Isn't this stop smoking ad beyond the pale?

Among other things that 2007 will come to be known for, it'll be the year of the gross-out anti-tobacco ad. Whether you're talking about the man that AdFreak refers to as Throat-Hole Guy, or the guy who lost his jaw from chewing tobacco, or the person who's lost a few toes due to smoking too much, it's not a pretty picture. Of this genre, the most over the top is our poor friend Skip Legault, pictured here, who, if you can't read the fine print, has suffered "two heart attacks, a stroke, fourteen surgeries, seven blood clots" and "leg amputation" because of smoking. So is this ad effective? I don't think so, and here's why. Poor Skip's smoking-related bad health is so completely over the top that I would think most smokers would look at it and say that could never happen to them, particularly the leg amputation. The ad is ultimately hard to relate to, because most of us have never run into an amputee who had to have a limb whacked off because of smoking. I don't think it doesn't happen, but Skip's experience seems fairly remote, and as we know, people who are addicted are full of denial about what could really happen to them. This ad doesn't help.