Tobacco Companies Glamorize Their Deadly Product
Tobacco companies will spend over $73 million promoting cigarettes in Maine this year – and they’re targeting kids. Big Tobacco is talking to our kids every day: in convenience stores, in magazines, online, and through special promotions designed to lure them into thinking that smoking is cool or a way to express their independence.
Create Fresh New Messages to Kids Every Year
Big Tobacco is actively capturing data about their young targets. They know their taste in music and fashion, what products their future customers might prefer, and how to reach them. Youth are highly influenced by retail store promotions, and almost half of all Maine high school students report experimenting with smoking.
As many as one-third of all youth who experiment with smoking do so because of effective tobacco industry marketing.
On August 17, 2006, U.S. District Judge Gladys Kesseler issued a federal opinion in the federal government’s lawsuit against major tobacco companies. It was found that the tobacco companies:
- violated civil racketeering laws.
- defrauded the American public by lying over decades about the health risks of tobacco
- did market to children.
- continue to deceive the public by “recruiting new smokers (the majority of whom are under the age of 18), preventing current smokers from quitting, and thereby sustaining the industry.”
How Does Big Tobacco Market Their Deadly Product?
Pinpointing Youth Behaviors
Tobacco companies intimately study youth behavior and use their findings to create images and themes attractive to youth.
- They spend enormous resources tracking the behaviors and preferences of youth under 21.
- They knowingly place advertisements in magazines popular with youth.
- They send direct mail pieces to youth without verifying their age.
- They use youth-targeted flavors in their tobacco and smokeless tobacco, such as Cherry Skoal, and candy-flavored cigarettes.
- They promote cigarette-sized cigars and push youth-targeted promotional items to promote their brands.
In the Movies
Tobacco in the movies and on television is portrayed as fun, exciting, sexy, rebellious or connected to wealth and power. That reinforces common advertising themes of the tobacco industry and increases youth smoking.
- When tobacco use is viewed as normal, it implies that smoking is acceptable and is another factor in encouraging young people to use tobacco.
- When leading actors light up or make anti-tobacco statements, it sends a powerful message to young people about tobacco use.
- Regardless of the intent, putting tobacco into the hands of the “bad guy” may also encourage teenage tobacco use.
- However, when anti-tobacco messages are included in movies or on TV, it has the opposite impact and may discourage young people from starting to smoke.
SceneSmoking.org is raising the awareness of smoking in the movies. Find and participate in reviews and ratings about who’s lighting up on screen.
At the Point of Sale
Cigarette companies increased their spending on point-of-sale marketing by almost $19 million between 2004 and 2005, and spent the bulk of their marketing dollars (81% or $10.6 billion) on strategies that facilitated retail sales, such as price discounts and ensuring prime retail space.
- In addition to advertising, tobacco company point-of-purchase promotional expenditures and “retail value-added” expenditures include coupons, multi-pack discounts for which retailers are reimbursed, providing free gifts with cigarette or spit tobacco purchases, and other tobacco discounts and merchandising given to customers at the sales outlets.
- Point-of-purchase promotional expenditures also include company payments to retailers to display the company’s brands, ads, and related materials prominently or in specific store locations.
- Retailers are often paid to keep special tobacco-product self-serve display racks on or in front of the counter, paid to put tobacco products on “good” shelving space, and given other promotional items for the store, such as open signs and counter mats – things often coordinated with current advertising campaigns.
Misleading Anti-Smoking Campaigns
- Televised anti-smoking ads sponsored by tobacco companies and targeted at youth do not change smoking outcomes. In fact, recent studies show that tobacco industry-sponsored prevention as intended for parents may have harmful effects on older youth.
- Tobacco companies rely on anti-smoking messages to be undone when young adults adopt adult behaviors. While state initiatives, like those in Maine, are effective in prevention, industry-sponsored anti-smoking messages only increase a company’s profile.
Targeting Specific Population Segments
Tobacco companies target specific populations. Find out how.
Get the latest reports about tobacco advertising techniques.
Back to Top