A Billboard That Hacks and Coughs at Smokers

Billboards are some of the more unlikely enhancers of the urban sensory experience: wafting out the buttery smell of baked potatoes, creating bubbles of fresh, pollution-free air, pointing out the identities of commercial airliners soaring overhead.

Now Stockholm has a billboard that takes aim at a habit that arguably degrades the public experience, with an interactive model who reacts with visible disgust to smoking. The advertisement, located on the city’s busy Odengatan plaza, uses smoke detectors to suss out the presence of lit cigarettes. A man on its computer screen then starts wincing and coughing, before the ad segues into a selection of smoking-cessation products.