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Action on Smoking and Health
A National Legal-Action Antismoking Organization Entirely Supported by Tax-Deductible Contributions
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Freedom Tobacco International Offers Lifetime Cigarette Supplies to Celebrities
[08/08-2]
Excerpts from: Tobacco firm offers celebs cigarettes for life
CNN.COM
[08/07/03]
A tobacco company is offering a free lifetime supply of cigarettes to celebrity
smokers as part of a guerrilla marketing campaign to raise the public profile
of its recently launched brand.
In a tersely worded pitch, Freedom Tobacco International Inc. said it was seeking to "seed" its cigarettes with adult celebrities. The appeal was made Tuesday to publicists through a Web-based network subscribed to by hundreds of public relations agencies.
Freedom paid covert actresses, called "leaners," to smoke the cigarettes in Manhattan bars and nightclubs for several weeks this spring in a New York effort to promote the fledgling brand, company spokeswoman Nancy Tamosaitis said. But the marketing ploy quickly drew fire from anti-smoking activists."Blatant tobacco industry marketing tactics like this one are very disturbing, yet they aren't very surprising to us," said Gwendolyn Young, a board member of the American Lung Association of California. "What it really shows is the tobacco industry is continuing to use these deceptive strategies to lure people of all ages into a deadly addiction."
The celebrity campaign could backfire for Freedom, said Paul Bloom, a professor of marketing at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill's Kenan-Flagler Business School."My reaction is that it is completely contrary to how all the other members
of the industry are behaving right now," Bloom said.
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