“If anyone had looked at it reasonably closely, they would have realised right from the start that [it wasn’t real],” Gardiner chuckles. Once the penny had dropped with April’s big reveal, the videos of glam rockers The Coughin’ Nails and hip hop artist M4-CEMA made it pretty clear. “I guess we thought it was worthwhile given the real message here, but at the same time I certainly respect everyone’s opinion on this. I don’t shy away from that,” he says.
The idea began during Mushroom’s other collaboration with the Australian National Preventative Health Agency (the organisation which fronted the money for Smokescreen): Live Solution. Fronted by some of Australia’s best hip hop musos including Pez, Bliss N Eso, Mantra and Illy, Live Solution aimed to combat binge-drinking culture by having their spokespeople address the topic in their own voices, giving it a legitimacy that other campaigns lack. “Through working on [Live Solution] we developed a really good relationship with [the ANPHA]. I became aware that another responsibility they had was to try and convince more Australians, particularly young Australian, to quit smoking. I was aware of that for a while, and I had this idea for a while that all the excitement and the channels that concert promoters use… could potentially be used to raise awareness about some other appropriate areas, and the anti-smoking sentiment became the one that I felt it could really work with.”
As the kernel of the idea blossomed, things started to fall into place. “Ironically I guess, once I became more aware of all the different illnesses or diseases that smoking can cause, I realised that there’s enough of them to sort of mirror the lineup of the number of acts at a festival,” Gardiner laughs. “It sort of evolved that way.”
He praises the ANPHA for the genuine wish to be innovative, as well as open to new ideas such as the Smokescreen initiative – something that may have looked mighty crazy on paper at first glance. The two headline acts are heavy on puns in their names, speech and tracks, and we all know that people either love or loathe a pun. “The Coughin’ Nails to some degree were inspired by Spinal Tap,” Gardiner says. “We felt that to take a paradoxical and tongue-in-cheek approach that we needed one of the bands involved to reflect that.” M4-CEMA actually comes across as not a bad rapper – but again, he is but a spectre in the real music world “I’ve got to say we were very fortunate there, because he is not a musician, but he is a very good actor,” explains Gardiner. “He spent a lot of time listening to the song, getting familiar with it, and thankfully for us knew how to make some of the right moves.”
To top it all off, Mushroom secured one of their own to do the interviewing of Smokescreen’s promoter and acts: Ella Hooper. “Ella’s someone that we’ve got a long history of working with, and [she’s] just a fantastic person to work with – not just as a talented singer-songwriter. We felt that given everything else was fictitious, we needed one real person to play a role. We sat down with Ella and talked at length. [She’s] a very strong anti-smoker herself, and felt strongly about the area. And as you would know, quite apart from being a singer-songwriter, Ella is also working as a music journalist on radio.”
Whether you’re in the camp that detests the campaign or the camp that allowed itself a chuckle, you’ve got to agree that the issue is worthy of discussion. “You figure that no matter how much awareness is out there, it’s worth having another crack,” Gardiner says. “Or having a crack in a different way that might just get through and connect with some people, where the other approaches that are being tried at the moment maybe aren’t getting through to them.”
BY ZOË RADAS
