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 By Anne Landman /Doc-Alert (Smokescreen.org).  Lorillards Cigarettes Memo About the Female Smoker Market [07/03/01]

Date of Document: June 28, 1973

     "...The growing importance of the female smoker is due to several factors including
     fewer females quitting, more females beginning to smoke, and female smokers
     increasing their daily cigarette volume....According to a recent HEW study, only 13% of
     adult women have given up smoking compared with 33% of adult males. Even assuming
     somewhat exaggerated figures, it is obvious that men are more likely to discontinue
     cigarette smoking.

     "And though one million adults are quitting smoking annually, teenagers are beginning
     to smoke in increasing numbers, with girls accounting for a growing proportion of
     teenage smokers. In the last four years, smoking among the 12 to 18 year age group
     increased from 14.7% to 15.7% among boys and from 8.4% to 13.3% among girls.

     "One is the greater concern women have that if they stop smoking they will gain weight.
     This fear undoubtedly prevents many women from desiring to stop smoking.

     "In addition, the first studies relating to smoking and health used male subjects. Because
     women were not shown evidence that smoking was equally deleterious to their own
     health, there was less reason for them to quit. However, recent studies have shown that
     as women's smoking habits become more like men's, women smokers become more
     prone to the same illnesses as male smokers."

But this acknowledgement of the disease-causing propensity of their products was of no
consequence, as Lorillard pressed on with the important matter of how they could position a new
cigarette to capture more of the women's market.

The memo critiques existing ad campaigns for women's cigarettes, in order to find an unfilled niche:
Lorillard's assessment of the advertising copy for Eve cigarettes is of interest. Eve was a cigarette
brand that had flowers printed on the paper around the tip, and was advertised as the first "pretty
cigarette." Ads for Eve had "cigarette packs frequently held in a brightly nail-polished hand against a
background of flower/plants or in traditional feminine hobby situations...

     "This traditional and very feminine approach...is directed to the woman whose life
     revolves around her role as a women, being pretty, soft, and feminine and gaining
     fulfillment from acceptably female hobbies. Even the promotion offered, a horoscope,
     exemplifies women's passivity and lack of control over her own future."