Action on Smoking and Health A National Legal-Action Antismoking Organization Entirely Supported by Tax-Deductible Contributions    Search  | Info About  | ash.org | To Join |  Email Page To Comment or Read Other Members' Comments, Click Here

Excerpts from: Got Smokes? Big Tobacco’s new marketing strategy draws fire

By Suzanne Smalley  Got Smokes?   [08/17/01]

                          On Valentine’s Day they handed out
                       long-stemmed roses. On Independence Day they
                       threw a free bash on a yacht docked in New
                       York Harbor. And last winter they hit chilly city
                       streets with hot coffee. They are the Lucky
                       Strike Force and they want you.
                            Welcome to tobacco advertising’s brave new world. R.J.
                         Reynolds calls it “trend-influence marketing.” Brown &
                         Williamson’s term is “relationship marketing.” The goal: to
                         connect on a personal level with customers—mostly young
                         ones. To do it, for instance, the Lucky Strike Force (teams
                         of attractive twentysomethings) promote Lucky brands
                         while it pampers smokers with roses and coffee. This year,
                         Reynolds hosted 700 parties for smokers (and their
                         nonsmoking pals) in 70 U.S. cities. Two years ago, Philip
                         Morris hosted some 117 events that only admitted people
                         who had acquired proof-of-purchase stamps from PM
                         cigarette brands. Many of these events featured musicians
                         like Smash Mouth, Violent Femmes and Afghan Whigs.
                                 With traditional magazine advertising accounting for
                         just 4.6 percent of the cigarette-industry’s $8.2 billion
                         collective marketing budget in 1999, this kind of
                         direct-to-consumer marketing constitutes the new face of
                         Big Tobacco’s promotion machine. Bonnie Herzog, a
                         tobacco analyst with Credit Suisse First Boston, figures the
                         companies spend a full 10 percent of their marketing dollars
                         on such tactics.
                                 Direct marketing of cigarettes really took off after the
                         industry’s 1998 settlement with the attorneys general of 46
                         states. The deal prohibited tobacco companies from
                         advertising in magazines with a substantial number of
                         readers under age 18. “How do we reach the hardened,
                         twentysomething, market-wary consumer?” asks a 1994
                         internal Reynolds memo that was publicized in the wake of
                         the tobacco settlement. “Today’s ‘Generation X’ consumer
                         is most influenced by what he or she sees in the hands of
                         friends, not by some stiff riding a horse in magazine
                         advertisements.... Camel’s goal of Trend-Influence
                         Marketing is to attract and convert smokers in the
                         trend-setting urban scene.”
                                 The memo writer must have been right. Today, Joe
                         Camel is dead, but the Camel brand hardly is. Between
                         June 2000 and June 2001, Camel increased its market
                         share from 5.41 percent to 5.87 percent—a significant jump
                         when a single percentage point represents 200 million packs
                         of cigarettes sold. In fact, most of Big Tobacco’s
                         direct-marketing efforts clearly target young consumers. All
                         of the companies advertise heavily in alternative and college
                         newspapers. R.J. Reynolds and Brown & Williamson
                         employ young marketing teams to work the crowds at hip
                         bars in New York City’s East Village, armed with free
                         cigarettes. (The tobacco companies spent $14.4 million
                         handing out free cigarettes in 1998; in 1999, the figure was
                         $33.7 million.) “What they’re doing is working indirectly to
                         make smoking cool and fun,” says Scott Goold, director of
                         Tobacco Freedom, a lobbying group that advocates a
                         complete ban on tobacco advertising. “You’ve got the
                         Marlboro racing team, the Marlboro adventure team ... It’s
                         almost like an MTV bash. Everyone’s partying, and they’re
                         the beautiful people.”
 
                                Some say the real danger of the Big
                         Tobacco-sponsored party circuit arises from the fact that so
                         few people outside of the targeted demographic actually see
                         the marketing that’s taking place. How can the government
                         and concerned adults fight what they are too square to even
                         realize exists? “I think the surge of these
                         under-the-radar-screen marketing campaigns to
                         college-aged kids are an effort to bring new people into the
                         market without attracting attention,” says Matthew Myers,
                         president of the National Center for Tobacco-Free Kids.
                         “This kind of marketing is so targeted that the 40-year-old
                         who would be outraged by a mass media campaign
                         wouldn’t even know it was going on. This kind of campaign
                         is about hiding, about being able to run a massive
                         public-relations campaign that you’re not encouraging young
                         people to smoke while simultaneously appealing to them.”
 
                                 During the holidays, look for the Lucky Strike Force in
                         an airport smoking lounge near you. They’ll almost definitely
                         be there, letting smokers make free cell-phone calls home to
                         family and friends before they board their flights. When it
                         comes to understanding their customers and potential
                         customers, Big Tobacco gets it.