The Tobacco Industry's Advertising Strategies
Source: Nevada
Tobacco Prevention Coalition
Statistics are a starting point for you, but you and your club members must
also explore the reasons and rationales related to smoking. Sociodemographic
(where and how people live), socioeconomic, environmental, behavioral, and
personal factors all affect the start of tobacco use among adolescents. But
how a young person perceives his or her environment as it relates to tobacco
use may be the strongest influence of all. That is why tobacco advertising has
a particularly powerful pull for to this audience.
The tobacco industry devotes about $6 billion each year to advertise and
promote its products. Although current tobacco industry rhetoric rejects the
notion that the industry has as a major objective appealing to young people,
its researchers, advertising, and public relations professionals know the
youth market and develop ads that will attract them.
One advertising executive who worked on a Marlboro account said, "when all
the garbage is stripped away, successful advertising involves showing the kind
of people most people would like to be, doing the things most people would
like to do, and smoking up a storm . . . ."
Further, young people are lured not only by ads that feature young models
and youthful images, they are also influenced by advertising that suggests
maturity, adulthood, and "the right to smoke." Either way, using tobacco looks
appealing and appears to be something that "everybody does" when, in fact,
fewer and fewer people smoke each year.
Increasing amounts of the tobacco industry's advertising and promotion
budget is being used for promotional give always. You can find tobacco ads on
clothes, jackets, caps, and t-shirts, and on cups, key chains, and a variety
of other items. Many of the major brands even have catalogs, and smokers can
exchange empty packs or receipts for merchandise, some of which is quite
expensive high-priced.
By attaching itself to other things that young people want, the tobacco
industry systematically influences their perception of the deadly products it
sells. Young people are turned into walking billboards for the tobacco
products, advertising to the target audience, other people their age.
One consequence of such intense advertising is that, when asked,
adolescents consistently overestimate the number of young people and adults
who smoke. According to the 1994 Surgeon General's Report, those with the
highest overestimates are more likely to become smokers than are those with
more accurate perceptions. Similarly, those who perceive that cigarettes are
easily accessible and generally available are more likely to begin smoking
than are those who think it is difficult to find or buy tobacco products.
Smokers often say that they began their habit because they wanted to "fit
with friends and sometimes family members who used tobacco. Other images in
the lives of young people, especially those in print advertising, suggest that
smoking, dipping, or chewing is part of a healthy, fun lifestyle.
Cigarette and smokeless tobacco advertisements in youth-oriented magazines
consistently use imagery that depicts tobacco use as adventurous, fun, and
romantic. These ads feature young, attractive models and appear very
frequently throughout magazines that teens and young adults read.
One study revealed that from 1984 through July 1989, the number of ads per
magazine issue generally declined in men's and women's magazines but was
relatively stable in those magazines reaching youth and black audiences.
Research has also shown that the highest number of tobacco ads depicting
horseplay and romantic contact are in youth- and black-oriented magazines,