Smokey Bear Effects

Smokey Bear, a symbol created by the Ad Council, declared, "Care will prevent nine out of ten forest fires.” Smokey was created to help stop human-caused wildfires. Specifically, during World War II, Japan was purposefully igniting acres of forests. “The reason for this is that they wanted to impact the timber industry because during this era nearly everything was made out of wood” (“The History Career of Smokey Bear”). Because of this, the Ad Council stepped in and created Smokey Bear. There were many effects. The most important one was the number of wildfires drop drastically. Through an ad campaign, Smokey Bear became the face of forest fire prevention and raised awareness for the issue in the United States. Smokey Bear is America’s
wildlife prevention icon. Before Smokey was introduced, people didn’t understand their role in preventing human-caused wildfires. American Icon, a leading website on the history of Smokey Bear, said, “Many people were careless when throwing lit matches in the forests. Many people would also leave their campfires lit in the forest and that would soon spread to cause a wildfire” (“American Icon”). These led to many wildfires caused by careless people. There needed to be change, something needed to happen. There needed to be a change so the Ad Council, an advertising agency, did something about the wildfire problem.
They asked Disney if they could use Bambi for an ad campaign. The Ad Council said, “Disney allowed them to use Bambi. The only catch to this offer was they could use Bambi for only one year, then they would have to find something else” (“Bambi or Bear”). The effect of Bambi was excellent, but since the 1 year was over they created a bear called Smokey Bear. Many people started watching the new ads and the effect was starting to work like Bambi did (“The History Career Smokey Bear”). Soon after both ads people started understanding their role in preventing wildfires (“American Icon”). Bambi was doing great, so was Smokey going to compare to Bambi? Before Smokey or even Bambi, wildfires would happen almost daily. Before, when they had wildfires they didn’t have good equipment, so the fires would just burn down everything. Bonnie said, “With them doing nothing but watch the fire burn, many homes got burned down. Now when there are human-caused forest fires, if we are lucky, they will die down within a couple hours. But we don’t have to worry about them because bambi taught everyone how to prevent human-caused forest fires (Angelo, Bonnie). With an ad campaign, Smokey Bear because the most known icon in the U.S. and raised awareness for human caused wildfires. In the future I predict that the number of human caused wildfires will go to 1-2
a year and even to zero times a year. The impact the Smokey made will always linger over the U.S.