Smokey Bear is back with a new public awareness campaign, and this time it’s a little more intimate.
With hugs. Bear hugs.
Smokey has been reminding adults and children since 1944 about the dangers of fires. In the latest videos created by the Advertising Council and Draftfcb agency, whenever someone in the forest shows the proper way to prevent wildfires, Smokey emerges and gives them a hug.
Smokey Bear has taken many different forms over his 69-year history. This 10-cent Dell comic book appeared in 1958 featuring a rather muscular version of the character and the title “Smokey the Bear, His Life Story.”
Although the Ad Council says that Smokey is recognized by 97 percent of adults and 77 percent of kids, recent surveys found that adults between the ages of 18 and 34 didn’t quite know what Smokey was asking them to do specifically, Lincoln Bramwell, chief historian of the U.S. Forest Service, told The New York Times.
Two ads have been released, and each sets up proper thoughts about how people should approach setting campfires in the forest. There’s a bit of wit attached to each, and they’re quite effective. (You can view the ads at the end of this post.) One of the commercials has social media as a focus, and the Ad Council’s use of the #SmokeyBearHug hashtag is a reminder to viewers and users to continue spreading Smokey’s standard message, “Only YOU can prevent wildfires.”
Read The Story of Smokey Bear Here
The campaign also returns Smokey’s likeness to a more familiar “man-in-a-bear-suit” look from a more recent and criticized computer generated character.
Next year will mark Smokey’s 70th birthday, and his original slogan was “Smokey Says — Care Will Prevent 9 out of 10 Forest Fires.” That slogan was modified by the Ad Council in the late 1940s to “Remember… Only YOU Can Prevent Forest Fires”, and again in 2001 to say “Only You Can Prevent Wildfires”.
And while you’ll hear his name also referenced as “Smokey the Bear”, his name is just “Smokey Bear.” The word “the” was added to a song that became popular in the early 1950s and the moniker became part of Smokey’s history.
Smokey’s likeness has been marketed on comic books and Little Golden Books, salt ‘n’ pepper shakers, clocks, clothing, bobblehead dolls, in songs and as a stuffed animal. Inexplicably, Smokey has also had his own brand of charcoal briquettes, matches and lighter — all in the 1960s.