Stacey J Anderson

Emotions for sale: cigarette advertising and women's psychosocial needs

Objective: To explore messages of psychosocial needs satisfaction in cigarette advertising targeting women and implications for tobacco control policy. Methods: Analysis of internal tobacco industry documents and public advertising collections. Results: Tobacco industry market research attempted to identify the psychosocial needs of different groups of women, and cigarette advertising campaigns for brands that women smoke explicitly aimed to position cigarettes as capable of satisfying these needs. Such positioning can be accomplished with advertising that downplays or excludes smoking imagery. As women’s needs change with age and over time, advertisements were developed to reflect the needs encountered at different stages in women’s lives. Cigarette brands for younger women stressed female camaraderie, self confidence, freedom, and independence; cigarette brands for older women addressed needs for pleasure, relaxation, social acceptability, and escape from daily stresses. Conclusions: Psychosocial needs satisfaction can be communicated without reference to cigarettes or smoking. This may explain why partial advertising bans are ineffective and comprehensive bans on all forms of tobacco marketing are effective. Counter-advertising should attempt to expose and undermine the needs satisfaction messages of cigarette advertising campaigns directed at women.

Marketing of menthol cigarettes and consumer perceptions: a review of tobacco industry documents

Objective To examine tobacco industry marketing of menthol cigarettes and to determine what the tobacco industry knew about consumer perceptions of menthol. Methods A snowball sampling design was used to systematically search the Legacy Tobacco Documents Library (LTDL) (http://legacy.library.ucsf.edu) between 28 February and 27 April 2010. Of the approximately 11 million documents available in the LTDL, the iterative searches returned tens of thousands of results from the major US tobacco companies and affiliated organisations. A collection of 953 documents from the 1930s to the first decade of the 21st century relevant to 1 or more of the research questions were qualitatively analysed, as follows: (1) are/were menthol cigarettes marketed with health reassurance messages? (2) What other messages come from menthol cigarette advertising? (3) How do smokers view menthol cigarettes? (4) Were menthol cigarettes marketed to specific populations? Results Menthol cigarettes were marketed as, and are perceived by consumers to be, healthier than non-menthol cigarettes. Menthol cigarettes are also marketed to specific social and demographic groups, including African–Americans, young people and women, and are perceived by consumers to signal social group belonging. Conclusions The tobacco industry knew consumers perceived menthol as healthier than non-menthol cigarettes, and this was the intent behind marketing. Marketing emphasising menthol attracts consumers who may not otherwise progress to regular smoking, including young, inexperienced users and those who find ‘regular’ cigarettes undesirable. Such marketing may also appeal to health-concerned smokers who might otherwise quit.

Every document and picture tells a story: using internal corporate document reviews, semiotics, and content analysis to assess tobacco advertising

In this article we present communication theory as a conceptual framework for conducting documents research on tobacco advertising strategies, and we discuss two methods for analysing advertisements: semiotics and content analysis. We provide concrete examples of how we have used tobacco industry documents archives and tobacco advertisement collections iteratively in our research to yield a synergistic analysis of these two complementary data sources. Tobacco promotion researchers should consider adopting these theoretical and methodological approaches.

Tobacco documents research methodology

Tobacco documents research has developed into a thriving academic enterprise since its inception in 1995. The technology supporting tobacco documents archiving, searching and retrieval has improved greatly since that time, and consequently tobacco documents researchers have considerably more access to resources than was the case when researchers had to travel to physical archives and/or electronically search poorly and incompletely indexed documents. The authors of the papers presented in this supplement all followed the same basic research methodology. Rather than leave the reader of the supplement to read the same discussion of methods in each individual paper, presented here is an overview of the methods all authors followed. In the individual articles that follow in this supplement, the authors present the additional methodological information specific to their topics. This brief discussion also highlights technological capabilities in the Legacy Tobacco Documents Library and updates methods for organising internal tobacco documents data and findings.

Menthol cigarettes and smoking cessation behaviour: a review of tobacco industry documents

Objective To determine what the tobacco industry knew about menthols relation to smoking cessation behaviour. Methods A snowball sampling design was used to systematically search the Legacy Tobacco Documents Library (LTDL) (http://legacy.library.ucsf.edu) between 15 May to 1 August 2010. Of the approximately 11 million documents available in the LTDL, the iterative searches returned tens of thousands of results. A final collection of 509 documents relevant to 1 or more of the research questions were qualitatively analysed, as follows: (1) perceived sensory and taste rewards of menthol and potential relation to quitting; and (2) motivation to quit among menthol users. Results Menthols cooling and anaesthetic effects mask the short-term negative physiological effects of smoking such as throat pain, burning and cough. This provides superficial physical relief as well as psychological assurance against concerns about the health dangers of smoking that would otherwise motivate smokers to quit. Menthol smokers, particularly women, perceive the minty aroma of menthol cigarettes to be more socially acceptable than non-menthol cigarettes. Discussion Consumers believe menthols sensory effects equate to health protections and that menthol cigarettes are more socially acceptable than non-menthol cigarettes. Menthol in cigarettes may encourage experimenters who find non-mentholated cigarettes too harsh, including young or inexperienced users, to progress to regular smoking rather than quitting, and may lessen the motivation to quit among established menthol smokers. The perception of menthol cigarettes as more socially acceptable lessens the impact of smoking denormalisation on quitting motivation. Menthol makes cigarettes easier and more palatable to smoke and less desirable to quit among established smokers. Fewer smokers quitting contributes to the incidence of tobacco-related diseases.

‘Acceptable rebellion’: marketing hipster aesthetics to sell Camel cigarettes in the US

Objective The aim of the present work was to understand why and how RJ Reynolds and other tobacco companies have marketed tobacco products to young adult social trendsetting consumers (termed ‘hipsters’) to recruit trendsetters and average consumers to smoke. Methods Analysis of tobacco industry documents and industry marketing materials. Results Since 1995, RJ Reynolds developed its marketing campaigns to better suit the lifestyle, image identity and attitudes of hip trendsetters (so-called ‘hipsters’), and Camels brand identity actively shifted to more closely convey the hipster persona. Camel emphasised in-venue events such as promotional music tours to link the brand and smoking to activities and symbols appealing to hipsters and their emulating masses. Conclusions To reach this targeted and socially valuable trend-setting population, public health advocates must tap into hipster psychology and expose to the targeted community the tobacco companys efforts to infiltrate the hipster community to turn hipsters into tobacco-using role models.

“And they told two friends…and so on”: RJ Reynolds’ Viral Marketing of Eclipse and Its Potential to Mislead the Public

Objective: To explore viral marketing strategies for Eclipse cigarettes used by the RJ Reynolds Company (Winston-Salem, North Carolina, USA). Methods: Analysis of previously secret tobacco industry documents and multimedia materials. Results: The failure of RJ Reynolds’ (RJR) 1988 “smokeless” cigarette, Premier, was in part due to widespread bad word of mouth about the product’s flavour, quality and difficulty of use. In 1994 RJR introduced an updated version of Premier, the ostensibly “reduced risk” Eclipse cigarette. RJR developed viral marketing channels to promote Eclipse using (1) exploratory interviews to motivate consumers to spread the word about Eclipse prior to market release, (2) promotional videos featuring positive feedback from test group participants to portray majority consensus among triers, (3) “Tupperware”-like parties for Eclipse where participants received samples to pass around in their social circles and (4) the Eclipse website’s bulletin board as a forum for potential users to discuss the brand in their own words. These strategies targeted the brand’s likeliest adopters, recruited informal and credible representatives of the product unaffiliated with RJR, and controlled the information spread about the product. Conclusions: Viral marketing techniques may be particularly useful to promote new tobacco products such as Eclipse that have limited appeal and need a highly motivated audience of early adopters and acceptors. Such techniques help evade the mass rejection that could follow mass promotion, circumvent marketing restrictions, and allow tobacco companies to benefit from health claims made by consumers. Cigarette manufacturers must be held accountable for perceived health benefits encouraged by all promotional activities including viral marketing.

Exposure to smoking in movies among British adolescents 2001–2006

Objective To estimate youth exposure to smoking in movies in the UK and compare the likely effect with the USA. Methods We collected tobacco occurrences data for 572 top-grossing films in the UK screened from 2001 to 2006 and estimated the number of on-screen tobacco impressions delivered to British youths in this time period. Results 91% of films in our sample that contained smoking were youth-rated films (British Board of Film Classification rating ‘15’ and lower), delivering at least 1.10 billion tobacco impressions to British youths during theatrical release. British youths were exposed to 28% more smoking impressions in UK youth-rated movies than American youth-rated movies, because 79% of movies rated for adults in the USA (‘R’) are classified as suitable for youths in the UK (‘15’ or ‘12A’). Conclusion Because there is a dose-response relation between the amount of on-screen exposure to smoking and the likelihood that adolescents will begin smoking, the fact that there is substantially higher exposure to smoking in youth-rated films in the UK than in the USA suggests that the fraction of all youth smoking because of films in the UK is probably larger than in the USA. Other countries with ratings systems that are less conservative (in terms of language and sexuality) than the USA will also be likely to deliver more on-screen tobacco impressions to youths. Assigning an ‘18’ classification to movies that contain smoking would substantially reduce youth exposure to on-screen smoking and, hence, smoking initiation among British youths.

Implications of the federal court order banning the terms “light” and “mild”: what difference could it make?

Federal District Judge Gladys Kessler found that the major American tobacco companies violated the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act, defrauding the public by deceptively marketing “light” cigarettes. Judge Kessler’s ruling prohibits the defendant tobacco companies from implying health benefits through using misleading terms such as “light”, “mild” or “low-tar”, or through other indirect means. This ruling could be interpreted narrowly as simply prohibiting certain words, or could be interpreted broadly as prohibiting implying health benefits by any other means, including colour, numbers or images. It is important to include indirect communications, as tobacco companies easily circumvent narrow advertising bans. A narrow interpretation would be inconsistent with the court’s comprehensive factual findings of fraudulent intent by the industry. A broad interpretation of the Order, including existing brands, line extensions and new tobacco products such as potential reduced exposure products that are marketed as “cigarettes”, Judge Kessler’s order could make a substantial contribution to protecting health.

Galbraith and the Management of Specific Demand: Evidence from the tobacco industry

In The New Industrial State John Kenneth Galbraith famously argued large corporations would seek to manage the demand for their products. Although attracting a degree of attention and notoriety around the time of publication, Galbraiths thesis of the direct manipulation of the consumer has slipped somewhat from view in favor of a view of advertising as information provision. We reconsider Galbraiths theory of the Management of Specific Demand and illuminate its salience in the context of the US tobacco industry. We conclude that the US experience is congruent with many of the claims that Galbraith made regarding the manipulation of the consumer by large corporations and thus warrants rehabilitation of the Galbraithian view.