Tobacco’s Youthful PR Problem
Tobacco companies’ marketing techniques are again in the spotlight, after revelations last week that RJ Reynolds Tobacco Co., the second-largest cigarette company, specifically targeted young smokers in its advertisements.
Advertising and image-building experts agree that the industry has a public relations problem in this arena, the perception being that the tobacco companies are placing self-interest over public health.
Experts say tobacco companies can combat these views by emphasizing a message against youth smoking in their advertising, paralleling what the beer industry has done in recent years.
Joe Gleason, managing director of Manning, Selvage & Lee, a Washington public relations firm, said the companies should follow the lead of the alcohol industry and sponsor advertising with a message that essentially is, “If you’re under 21, we don’t want your business.” Those kind of ads speak to a level of “corporate responsibility,” said Gleason, who specializes in crisis management.
“There’s no magic wand” for the tobacco companies, Gleason said. “It’s a long road to rehabilitation in the public’s eye . . . but this would at least be a step in the right direction.”
Thomas Lom, executive vice president at Saatchi & Saatchi, a New York advertising firm, also supports the idea of an anti-smoking campaign aimed at youth, particularly one featuring youngsters’ role models. “Joe Camel made smoking cool; what you’ve got to do is get Michael Jordan to say it isn’t cool,” he said.
In the 1980s, Lom helped Johnson & Johnson, the makers of Tylenol, handle a public relations nightmare when product tampering led to the deaths of half a dozen people.
There’s one catch, though, Lom said. The industry must voluntarily sponsor such ads, rather than wait for the government to mandate it. “Everything they’ve done has been forced upon them. . . . They do it kicking and screaming, fighting every step of the way.”
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For example, RJR decided to retire its longtime advertising icon, Joe Camel, in July--after the Federal Trade Commission slapped the company with an unfair-advertising complaint.
Experts said the industry’s credibility would improve if companies began running anti-smoking ads before final approval of the $368.5-billion settlement reached by the tobacco companies and 40 state attorneys general in June.
The settlement, now awaiting congressional approval, requires $500 million to be spent annually on “counter-advertising” that explains the dangers of smoking. The advertising would be run by outside organizations rather than the tobacco companies.
Since the 1960s, the companies have taken some steps to send an anti-youth-smoking message. For example, after the FTC first took on the tobacco industry in the mid-1960s, the firms responded with a voluntary cigarette advertising code. It included bans on advertising in publications targeted to youth, such as comic books and school newspapers, as well as a provision prohibiting ads or statements that “smoking is essential to social prominence, distinction, success or sexual attraction.”
One problem with such an anti-smoking campaign, some advertisers say, is that it lacks the sizzle of a Joe Camel or Marlboro Man and isn’t attractive to the tobacco companies, which are in business to sell cigarettes.
Al Ries, chairman of Ries & Ries, a Roswell, Ga., marketing strategy firm, pointed out that brand loyalty is formed during one’s youth, and this is particularly true for cigarettes.
In a real sense, he said, a tobacco company’s profit depends on attracting young smokers, who may be drawn in by advertising. The problem is particularly acute for RJR because it’s not the brand leader. “If RJR did not target young people, it would be out of business,” Ries said.
If a tobacco company was his client, Ries said, he would advise it to “split the difference”--that is, run enough youth-focused advertising to keep customers but at the same time run public education ads to satisfy critics.
