This Slate squib on the current generation of anti-smoking ads seems to me to get it right. Slightly amusing to note, however, that these new and more sophisticated ads manage to be more subtly manipulative by warning teens that tobacco company marketers are subtly manipulative. The message, vaguely evocative of the liars paradox is: Don’t be duped by advertising that tries to tell you what’s cool—because that’s not cool!

That may, equally amusingly, make these ads more successful at the smoking/non-smoking threshhold than the tobacco company ads they’re targeting. The numbers I’ve seen suggest that tobacco ads influence the market share each brand commands, but that they don’t factor much at all in the decision whether or not to smoke at all.