The NHS smoking-cessation campaign, 'Loved ones', deploys one of the taboos of marketing: pester power. But this is positive pester power.
It's not designed to harass mum and dad into putting unwanted extras in the shopping trolley, its purpose is to stop them buying something wanted: cigarettes.
I launched my first ad campaign when I was eight. My dad was a smoker, and for Christmas I gave him a pack of cigarettes with a red ribbon wrapped around it, held together by a piece of Sellotape. The message read: 'Break this seal and you don't love me.'
Does this psychological warfare between children and their parents actually work? Research suggests that tapping into the guilt people feel when told that their smoking harms other people can be effective, particularly when targeting women.
The instinct to care for your child, to love and protect them, is strong. This tactic works because it positions smoking as a selfish act, and when the message is delivered by an innocent child, it becomes hard to ignore.
The parent/child theme has been used many times in the fight against smoking.
The most memorable have been David Abbott's ad featuring a little girl who knows exactly when her dad is coming home because she can recognise his smoker's cough as he comes down the path; the award-winning testimonial campaign from 2000 showing a girl who cries a single emotive tear as she talks about her dad's lung cancer; and, more recently, the campaign depicting childish drawings of adults holding cigarettes, alongside the message that children are more likely to become smokers if their parents smoke.
This latest idea is a video message recorded by a boy for his mum.
The simplicity of this campaign is effective, and its raw intimacy is likely to make it stand out, particularly as it uses a clever 'interruption' strategy. 'Hey mum, I know you're watching Corrie, I just want to give you this message - can you stop smoking, because it can give you cancer.'
Kids are particularly good at delivering hard messages because their language is blunt and visual: this little boy candidly tells his mum 'your lungs go black' and 'you need to make the right choice or your life is gone'.
There is no need here for advertising artifice or adult sensibility. Kids are uncompromising; they tell it like it is.
My only slight disappointment is the website. Wouldn't it also have been nice to have made the idea a bit more interactive, enabling the children and partners of smokers to post personal messages and videos to their loved ones?
Then I wouldn't have needed my red ribbon and Sellotape.