Foes Hold Tobacco Firms’ Feet to Fire : Industry’s Woes Kick Activists Into High Gear

Every night after dinner, as Jolanta Pienczykowsi watched her father pull his pack of Kent cigarettes from his shirt pocket and light up, she had to hold back her tears.

She figured that smoking was slowly killing her dad--as well as the rest of the family, which had to inhale the smoke secondhand. So Pienczykowsi, who was in high school at the time, created an anti-smoking poster with this warning about tobacco smoke: “If you can smell it, it may be killing you.”

Her poster--sponsored by the Coalition for a Smoke-Free America--will begin appearing in New York subway cars this week, just one example of how anti-smoking activist groups have banded together to take advantage of a black-eyed tobacco industry that is reeling from a recent spate of terrible publicity.

Another group, Women & Girls Against Tobacco, began posting anti-smoking ads in shopping malls throughout California last week. The ads read: “What has the tobacco industry done for women lately? Targeted them. Exploited them. Killed them. Don’t be their next victim.”

And the Boston-based consumer advocacy group Infact recently asked consumers to stop buying Philip Morris products such as Miller Beer and Oscar Mayer luncheon meats. It wants the tobacco giant to stop targeting children with ads featuring the Marlboro cowboy and costly promotions involving the Marlboro Adventure Team.

A series of recent events has kicked anti-smoking groups into high gear. A few weeks ago, congressional hearings saw the nation’s most powerful tobacco executives staunchly insisting that nicotine is not addictive. Time magazine and the New York Times Sunday Magazine recently ran cover stories on the industry’s headaches. And criticism continues to mount by those who say the Joe Camel caricature, which recently jumped from Camel ads to cigarette packs, is aimed at children.

Most anti-smoking activists recognize they might never again have such a readily available soapbox.

“They want to strike while the cigarette is still hot,” said Alvin Golin, chairman of the Chicago-based public relations firm Golin/Harris Communications.

Activists recognize there is a certain synergy in their actions right now, said Katharine D. Paine, chief executive of Delahaye Group, a Portsmouth, N.H.-based corporate identity firm.

“There is a national wave of concern, and the wave is starting to crest,” said Regina Penna, project director for Berkeley-based Women & Girls Against Tobacco.

Given the current environment, “the timing of the boycott is 100% right,” said Elaine Lamy, executive director of Infact. “This gives ordinary people something they can do to express their outrage.”

For their part, tobacco industry executives, who have long denied the clout of anti-smoking organizations, say they see no increased activity.

“Most of the activity I’ve seen is relatively confined to people who would fit in a small office,” said Brennan Dawson, a spokeswoman for the Washington-based Tobacco Institute.

Joe Cherner, president of New York-based SmokeFree Educational Services Inc., is taking action on several fronts. In addition to posting Pienczykowsi’s ads in subways this week, his group is buying space on Harlem bus shelters and purchasing radio spots. The group’s most immediate goal is to eliminate smoking in all city-run public spaces.

“There is no question that the pendulum has swung in our direction,” Cherner said. “If we don’t succeed now, we’ll never succeed.”

But backlash may be on the horizon.

“I keep cautioning people that they have to be careful about the (anti-tobacco) message,” Cherner said. “If it starts to sound preachy,” some people will bend in the other direction and possibly become more sympathetic to an industry that is trying to position itself as unfairly under siege, he said.

Activists point to one organized backlash being underwritten by the tobacco industry that could appear to be consumer-generated. Philip Morris is so concerned about smoking eventually being banned in places such as bars and restaurants that it is running print ads--complete with a toll-free number--that solicit consumer help in prompting businesses to establish smoking and non-smoking areas.

While this is an ideal time for the advocacy groups to speak up, they risk polarizing consumers if their messages do not stay focused, said Lynne Doll, executive vice president of the Los Angeles public relations firm Rogers & Associates.

For example, she said, secondhand smoke is an issue consumers can understand. “But if you get too many different anti-smoking messages out there, the public gets confused,” she said.

Pienczykowsi, now a college senior, says the poster she created has already had an effect that made all her effort worthwhile.

Her father has heeded the poster’s warning and quit smoking.

Briefly . . .

The $15.3-million account for the California Department of Health Service’s anti-smoking campaign is expected to be awarded this week to one of two Los Angeles agencies: Stein Robaire Helm or Asher Gould Advertising. . . . Venice’s hot newest ad shop, Group Zero, has picked up the estimated $5-million business for Carlsbad-based Cobra Golf Inc.’s line of King Cobra golf clubs. . . . The Los Angeles office of Hill & Knowlton has opened a new unit, Hill & Knowlton Hispanic Communications, which will handle Spanish-language public relations. . . . Durazo Communication and Imanda Wong Communications, which provide Latino and Asian marketing expertise, have announced a formal affiliation. . . . The Los Angeles chapter of the National Organization for Women has endorsed a nationwide boycott of all Calvin Klein products to protest Calvin Klein ads that it says exploit children and equate extreme thinness with beauty.