TRUE OR FALSE. Does the awareness campaign devised by the Alliance against Tobacco really show a particularly cynical industrialist?

On social media, a video showing a particularly cynical tobacco manufacturer is causing a reaction among Internet users. It is in fact a parody.

A video caused a lot of reaction on social networks in early August. It shows TV and radio presenter Samuel Etienne interviewing a person who introduces himself as a tobacco industrialist. The journalist, known for his Twitch channel, asks him a question about child labor in tobacco crops and he answers: “With these tobacco crops, we offer jobs to entire families in the areas where we grow. And thanks to this cheap labor, we increase our margins! This is what we call a well-managed business.”

On X, a Twitter user with a million subscribers, Arkunir, posted the video and commented: “I’ve never seen anything like it, it’s such a shame.” Under its publication, many Internet users are also offended by the industrialist’s cynicism. However, it is not a real industrialist but a parody. The video is part of an awareness campaign against the ravages of tobacco.

This is what Arkunir revealed in a second tweet a few hours later. The influencer actually entered into a partnership with the Alliance against Tobacco association, which created the video, to share it on social media. His first tweet, in which he seemed to believe in the video, was actually a hoax, with the aim of attracting the attention of Twitter users.

Samuel Etienne, for his part, is part of the scheme. It was Alliance Against Tobacco that asked him to do this fake interview, using his notoriety to make a splash on social media. The host recorded nearly two hours of video, broadcast live on Twitch on Tuesday, July 30 and visible on YouTube: eight minutes of fake interview, with an actor who plays the fake industrialist named Nick O’Tine, then a long interview with the president of Alliance Against Tobacco. The association then contacted several influencers to relay the video, including Arkunir.

This original campaign by Alliance Against Tobacco is actually aimed at young people. In the long interview with Samuel Etienne, the president of Alliance Against Tobacco explains that this generation is less receptive to traditional campaigns such as photos on cigarette packets, for example. The association therefore wanted to seek them out on social networks using irony and parody to make them react. ACT also wanted to avoid making consumers feel guilty and instead denounce the cynicism of manufacturers.