Comprehensive ban on advertising

Back to "A shared world"

Tobacco advertising is aimed at kids, despite industry's claim that it is not

Without Them Industry Would Be ‘Devastated’ in 10 Years, Expert Says

The claim of the tobacco industry that advertising is solely aimed at influencing a choice of cigarette brands -- rather than at inducing smoking, particularly among children -- has been described as one of "inherent implausibility."

In addition, industry’s resorting to sponsorship of sporting events to circumvent laws that prohibit advertising on television "has an insidious quality" about it.

These statements are from ‘Children and Cigarette Advertising,’ a section of a report by Dr Phillip Aitken, a marketing expert at the University of Strathclyde, Glasgow that is part of a booklet entitled "Pushing Smoking: Tobacco Advertising and Promotion." The report was presented at the 1^st European Conference on Tobacco Policy in Madrid under the sponsorship of the government of Spain, the Commission of the European Communities and the World Health Organization.

Advertising either promotes or reinforces smoking, and is generally aimed at the young, the report points out, adding that "the failure of a generation of young people to start smoking would devastate the industry within ten years.

The report lists six possible effects of advertising, the first of which is to encourage non-smokers to smoke, particularly ‘under-age" children. The second is to discourage smokers from quitting, the third is to encourage smokers to smoke even more, and the fourth is to discourage them from cutting down.

The fifth reason is to influence smokers to remain loyal to a tobacco product, or to lure them away to another one, as for instance from cigarettes to cigars or to pipes. The sixth, and final reason is to influence the choice of tobacco brand.

"The tobacco industry’s claim that tobacco advertising affects only brand choice goes against widely held advertising concepts, the report notes, and is "analogous to claiming that attractive advertisements for skiing holidays in specific hotels, or resorts, do not promote or reinforce skiing per se.

Through attaching cigarette brand names to advertisements for non-tobacco goods and services, a technique that the report calls "brand-stretching," tobacco companies get around bans on promoting cigarettes on television.

For example, the distinctive logo and colours for Kim cigarettes, a brand aimed at women, were worn by a top tennis player for two seasons at Wimbledon and seen on television by a world-wide audience of millions. According to the report, the company claimed that "Kim sportswear was being promoted, not Kim cigarettes."

In describing that explanation as not "very convincing," the report cites an internal memo written in 1979 by British American Tobacco Corporation that says, in part:

"Opportunities should be explored by all companies to find non-tobacco products, and other services, which can be used to communicate the brand or house name, together with their essential visual identifiers. This is … to ensure that cigarette lines can be effectively published when all direct forms of communication are denied …"

According to the report, studies have shown that "children are more receptive to cigarette advertising than adults realize. Many can identify cryptic or edited cigarette advertisements," For example:

--A majority of children over age 12 in British studies linked sports events on television sponsored by the tobacco industry to cigarettes. Thus, children equated Grand Prix racing with either John Player Special or Marlboro cigarettes; and snooker tournaments to Benson & Hedges or Embassy cigarettes -- even though cigarettes themselves were not seen on the screen.

-- Another study indicated that 10- and 11-years olds displayed "a rudimentary awareness of the brand personalities" shown in advertisements for Kim and More cigarettes, both brands designed for women smokers, the former for those in their twenties and the latter for those older.

-- A Scottish study showed that 22 per cent of 6- to l0- year-olds and 91 per cent of 12- to l6-year-olds linked a holiday advertisement to cigarettes or to cigarettes and holidays." Part of the ad depicted a racing car with a cigarette brand name (John Player Special), its logo, and the colours of the pack. The cigarettes themselves were neither shown nor mentioned, thus indicating that many Scottish children recognize the brand’s "essential visual identifiers at a glance."

"Cigarette advertising is getting through to children and to under-age smokers in particular," the report states. Not only do they take more notice of ads but, as research in Australia showed, "children who approved of cigarette advertising were twice as likely to become smokers than were children who disapproved."

Moreover, surveys indicate that "heavily advertised brands" are preferred by children, for instance, in Sydney, Winfield cigarettes and in Glasgow, Kensitas. Almost 390,000 was spent by the manufacturer of the latter brand the year before the survey, mainly for ads in popular Glasgow tabloids.

"Thus, claims by the tobacco industry that cigarette advertising does not promote or reinforce smoking among the young do not accord with findings from recent research into children’s perceptions of cigarette advertising, the reports says.

A combination of health education in schools, a ban on advertising, a mobilization of parents, plus legislation are chief among recommendations to counter the effects of advertising on children.

Such measures resulted in a decline in smoking among boys and girls ages 13, 14 and 15 from the mid-1950s to the mid-1980s in Norway. In that country, the report says, "smoking is no longer considered as normal social behaviour and a sign of maturity."

Another recommendation is "counter-advertising and brand-image spoofing," as used by the group "Doctors Ought to Care" in the United States, and B.U.G.A.U.P. ("Billboard-Utilising Graffitists Against Unhealthy Promotion") in Australia. An advertisement of a cowboy on a horse silhouetted against the sun that said "New Mild. And Marlboro" became, after graffitists Down Under got through with it, "New Kill. And a bore."