Tobacco Marketing

6 Pages 1486 Words

Young People: A Key Expansion Market

The tobacco industry loses close to 5,000 customers every day in the US alone—including 3,500 who manage to quit and about 1,200 who die. The most promising “replacement smokers” are young people: 90% of smokers begin before they’re 21, and 60% before they’re 14! To find their new customers, every day US tobacco companies spend $11 million to advertise and promote cigarettes—more than the US Federal Office on Smoking and Health spends to prevent smoking in an entire year.

US Youth: “Cool” Customers
In the US, cigarette advertising links smoking with being “cool”, taking risks, and growing up. At the same time, the tobacco industry insists that it does not want children to smoke—and backs up its claims with campaigns supposedly designed to discourage young people from smoking. However, programs like “Tobacco: Helping Youth Say No” are not only slick public relations efforts designed to bolster industry credibility, they actually encourage youth tobacco use. By leaving out the health dangers, ignoring addiction, and glamorizing smoking as an “adult custom,” these campaigns reinforce the industry’s advertising theme presenting smoking as a way for children to exert independence and be grown up.

International “Passport to Prosperity”
Outside the US, central messages are wealth, health, and consumption—in short, “USA.” According to Kenyan physician Paul Wangai, “Many African children have two hopes. One is to go to heaven, the other to America. US tobacco companies capitalize on this by associating smoking with affluence. It’s not uncommon to hear children say they start because of the glamorous life-style associated with smoking.”

In emerging markets from Eastern Europe to Southeast Asia, transnational tobacco giants Philip Morris, RJR Nabisco, and B.A.T. Industries aggressively hawk cigarettes with slogans like; “L & M: The Way ...