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BMJ No 7106 Volume 315 Editorial Saturday 23 August 1997 Tobacco marketing: shackling the pied piper To stop the young from smoking we must move beyond advertising bans See Editorial p 440, News p 448 These are encouraging times for tobacco control. Both the British and the American governments are trying to curb the activities of the tobacco industry, and the European Union will probably now move against tobacco advertising across Europe. This is a good moment, therefore, to emphasise that our key concern should be not with advertising, or sponsorship, or indeed any individual element of the industry's promotional activity, but with the whole process of tobacco marketing. As with the successful marketing of other consumer goods, tobacco marketing is based on careful research to provide a detailed understanding of customers, and this guides linked strategies in the four marketing areas of product development, distribution, pricing, and promotion. These strategies aim to build successful brands and thereby maximise the appeal of the industry's offerings. Tobacco has two sorts of customer: starters, who are just trying out the habit and deciding whether to take it up, and committed users, who have been smoking for some time. Committed users are easier to please: they simply need access to their regular fix of nicotine. Starters are different. They are young: in the UK, for example, 40% of smokers begin before they are 16, and virtually no one over the age of 21 takes it up.(1) Thus they begin before they are old enough to appreciate the long term implications of a tobacco habit, and by the time they do they are committed. Also, starters' interest in tobacco is social rather than biochemical. They smoke to belong, to rebel, to express their individuality, to take risks, to appear more grown up, to be cool, and so on. None of this is wasted on the tobacco companies. They are well versed in the strengths of their product; they know who their key targets are and how to meet their needs. Above all, they know the importance of starters to their prosperity: as one marketing plan infamously noted, "The industry is dominated by the companies who respond most effectively to the needs of the younger smoker."(2) All four marketing tools are therefore used to approach starters.(3) The product needs to be reassuringly mainstream and normal; distribution needs to ensure accessibility and familiarity (the local newsagent is key here); and prices should be mid-range (teenagers are surprisingly resistant to cheap offerings). These efforts are supported by promotion, which incorporates all manner of above and below the line communication with the customer, including direct mail, competitions, loyalty schemes, brand stretching (putting tobacco branding on other products, such as clothes), and packaging - as well as conventional advertising and sponsorship.(4) All these marketing efforts are aimed at building and maintaining brands. Branding adds emotional values to cigarettes,(5) such as identity ("this is the cigarette for people like me"), reassurance ("I know smoking is bad for you, but my mild brand won't do much harm"), and familiarity. At a more prosaic level branding facilitates consumption, particularly by the young and inexperienced. It helps them buy cigarettes - a tricky operation for the underage smoker - by telling them what to look and ask for. It helps them smoke in what is typically a group setting, by ensuring that they are seen to light up and offer round the right cigarettes. Branding is important in all major consumer markets, but it seems to be especially important to young smokers. They consistently smoke the most heavily advertised brands and are much more conservative in their choice of brands than are adults.(6,7) Older, committed smokers are not completely forgotten by the tobacco marketer. Their addiction puts the marketing emphasis on the product, which must deliver adequate nicotine, and comprehensive distribution, to maximise availability. Promotion and pricing strategies are less important, but still relevant. For example, coupon schemes can be used to reward loyalty and economy brands to mitigate cost. Tobacco marketing therefore is a complex, strategic process, and society's response has to be equally coherent and comprehensive. Certainly it needs more than a straightforward ban on advertising and sponsorship. The key customer group is the starter. The primary long term aim for tobacco control should therefore be to emasculate tobacco brands. To achieve this, all brand related communication and promotion should end, distribution and personal selling should be severely limited, sales to children should be stopped, all cigarettes should be low tar and low nicotine, and taxation should ensure that prices are uniform and high. This will greatly reduce the tobacco marketers' capacity to create artificial differences between their offerings. As a result, brands will wither and the positive imagery they generate dissipate. Perhaps the easiest way forward is to tell tobacco companies what they can do rather than what they can't. Ideally, they should be allowed simply to produce and sell plain packs of low tar cigarettes and communicate about these only by approved letter in response to specific inquiries from retailers or the public. Brand names in standard fonts could be permitted, but only on the pack. These should be the limits of tobacco marketing. Only with such stringent and wide ranging measures can we hope to limit seriously the tobacco marketers' ability to attract the young to smoking. Even then, children will not be fully stopped from taking up the habit - other measures, especially from health promotion, will also be needed - but this shackling of tobacco's pied piper is a vital first step. Gerard Hastings Professor Lynn MacFadyen Research officer Martine Stead Senior researcher Centre for Social Marketing, Strathclyde University, Glasgow G4 0RQ References 1 Thomas M, Holroyd S, Goddard E. Smoking and secondary school children in 1992. London: Office of Population Censuses and Surveys, 1992. 2 Pollay R W, Lavack A M. The targeting of youths by cigarette marketers: archival evidence on trial. Advances in Consumer Research 1993;20:266-70. 3 Froese B, Héone D, Lavack A M, Venon L, Madill J D. Marketing of tobacco products. Ottowa: Health Canada, 1996. 4 Pollay, R W. Targeting tactics in selling smoke: youthful aspects of twentieth century cigarette advertising. Journal of Marketing Theory and Practice 1995; Winter: 1-22. 5 Barnard M, Forsyth A. The social context of under age smoking: a qualitative study of cigarette brand preference. Health Education Journal 1996;55:175-84. 6 Aitken P P, Leathar D S, Scott A I, Squair S I. Cigarette brand preferences of teenagers and adults. Health Promotion 1998;2:219-26. 7 Hastings G B, Ryan H, Teer P, MacKintosh A M. Cigarette advertising and children's smoking: why Reg was withdrawn. BMJ 1994;309:933-7. Home | Current issue | Past issues | Classified ads | Career Focus | Feedback Collections | About this site | About the BMJ | BMA | Medline