Tobacco.org

"Cigarette Seduction, Part I" with ALAN BRODY: What The Smoker's Brands Say About The Smoker

"Cigarette Seduction, Part I" with ALAN BRODY:

Deconstructing Smoking's Siren Appeal to Teens

GENE BORIO, Co-moderator: Welcome to "Cigarette Seduction," with ALAN BRODY. Alan is a technology marketing journalist and entrepreneur who founded of the Marcom Awards, the advertising awards program sponsor by both ADWEEK and Advertising Age. He produces the pioneering internet advertising conferences CreaTECH and HOLLYWEB. He is also a columnist who has appeared regularly in Advertising Age Creativity, ADWEEK's Marketing Computers, MacWEEK, Multimedia Producer etc. Since the 80s he has had a special interest in deconstructing the powerful imagery and appeals contained in tobacco advertising and packages. This may be an esoteric area for some. So let me start there--What kicked you off on this research and what good is studying this sort of thing anyway?

ALAN BRODY: I spent my early years in Africa and was somewhat familiar with the tribal initiation ceremonies common to the indigenous people and I was struck by the similarly in age and process between their rites of initiation and the teen smoking in America. Typically the African rites involve deprivation, danger and then a "meeting" with the governing spirits. The successful initiate is then given an identity and a tribal mark--usually some form of facial scarification. In other tribes it is a--tattoo. You will understand therefore the sense of eureka I experienced when I discovered that Marlboro was launched with a campaign of tattooed men. As to the other question, there is no good reason to study this--we are compelled, but at the end of our compulsion lies higher knowledge

GENE BORIO Are there other initiation ritual parallels besides tattoos?

ALAN BRODY Do you mean in smoking or are you referring to things like piercing?

GENE BORIO I'm thinking of scarification of the lungs, and the breathing in of a totem?

ALAN BRODY Yes that is part of the process. Initiation is where you are presumed to learn the secrets of the tribe. There is often a trance-like period where you may in effect "meet" with the presiding deity. What is critical here--because people often look and say "so this is Africa or Borneo or whatever but not here"--is that the youths truly want this to happen to them and would die rather than miss their chance to gain knowledge and identity in their tribes.

JANET BRIGHAM So the translation of that into our culture is...

ALAN BRODY:The cigarette initiation process in a commercial and degraded way, imitates this. The teen suffers for several weeks coughing retching but after then...

JANET BRIGHAM .....that youthful initiators of smoking behaviors are at additional risk, given their shortsightedness regarding life risks anyway

ALAN BRODY: I think most people realize that teens have a very, very dim view of their own mortality and a far more interested in the rapid acculturation to the "group" than the long-term detriment to their health. Also, danger is part of what makes it exclusive. I think the point is that teens are not only brainwashed but the critical problem is they are seeking an entry point to a difficult, dangerous path of life called adulthood.

DAVE CUNDIFF Co-Moderator: Janet, I think that your remark suggests a Public Health perspective, while Alan is trying to make an anthropological point. The dialogue *between* Public Health and anthropology is fascinating regarding the deeper issue of what the behavior of smoking actually means.

JANET BRIGHAM: I think the question did sound more public-healthish, but my interest is more psychological aspect of Alan's work.

ALAN BRODY: Well, either way, the issue is if we don't rediscover this issue of initiation we will never truly wean teens from the IDEA of smoking and may in fact be ineffective representing our societal values to them in a general sense.

ERICH(MEX) Do you think nicotine causes addiction?

ALAN BRODY: I would say that EVERYONE knew that since the 17th century except for the legal profession.

JANET BRIGHAM: So it's as if smoking viewed in this larger perspective is much more than an addiction. What does this say about our prevention efforts? I have wondered if they are doomed to backfiring, in light of this perspective. (Doomed if they involve recitations of risk, that is.)

ALAN BRODY: Right, they don't work on teens. And that's really the point. In the past 10 years since going "public" with my work the world has changed and we have witnessed a dramatic change in attitude and with adults quitting in bigger numbers. But not teens. The opposite is the case. Teens tend to see this as something that worked as a passage to adulthood for others and even if they have abandoned it now, "well it worked then, didn't it." Also, many of the products that aid quitting have the unintended message of telling them that smoking, even if it is addictive, is now revocable.

JANET BRIGHAM: How do you think this is related to parental use? From your point of view, would parents be role models, or perhaps reverse role models? Or is their influence diminished by the larger cultural presence of smoking as a transitional object, so to speak?

ALAN BRODY: It's a really tough issue because teens have a hard time listening to their parents and on the other side even teens who at one point will deride their smoking parents, may suddenly find the tables turned and be smokers themselves. (Ed: Studies have shown that the odds of a teen's smoking go up according to whether and how many of their parent's smoke). The issue is basically this: if the teens are smoking because they are following a crowd, you need to deal with who and what that crowd of friends is. If they are smoking out of private reasons only then we are in the realm of what cigarettes become for many people--a psychological palliative and you need to find out what's bothering them.

SARAH: The secret to stop children smoking is to educate them about peer group pressure.

ALAN BRODY Partly, but remember teens are going through a very awkward period, cigarettes can appear to boost their confidence and there may be no other consumption alternative available. I think if they see the false magic of smoking for what they'll have a better chance. But make no mistake, the whole issue works like a drumbeat on kids for this reason I have proposed that cigarettes be available without nicotine while the nicotine versions are relegated to the equivalent of controlled outlets like liquor stores.

SARAH Yes, but they need to understand life cycles. It is only by parents explaining to their children will they SARAH understand

SARAH Thank you. Alan, sorry what is your background

ALAN BRODY I am a journalist and advertising/marketing executive and my current business specialty is the internet.

SARAH Thanks

GENE BORIO I have a question, Alan. Do you believe the cigarette companies have more of this knowledge than the rest of us? And are using it?

ALAN BRODY: Well, when I started on this I was in fact trying to get a job as a starting out copywriter and I remember I had this campaign which became--either coincidentally or because it was stolen--Brown & Williamson's Barclay. I found that advertising people thought it absurd that tobacco folks would have any of this kind of sophistication. But when I looked into the work of the researchers--especially the consultants like Ernest Dichter and Louis Cheskin in the 40's and 50's, it was clear that back at the old tobacco ranch, they certainly did. In fact, they had been dipping into the psychoanalytical well since 1922 or thereabouts when A.A. Brill was hired by George Washington Hill of American Tobacco to consult on why women smoke and how he could get them to adopt Lucky Strike. However, the companies tended to be leery when it came to applying this information--except for Philip Morris.--they were remarkably sophisticated.

GENE BORIO Can you get specific as to how that applied to their brand(s)?

ALAN BRODY: Well, my work centered on Marlboro. The Marlboro story tells it all--they spent $200,000 in 1950's money researching it and they used psychologists to determine the right packaging and to determine the right message to smokers. It was clear that they intended the product to have a military or martial look and feel--even the name--which they resurrected from a defunct woman's brand suggests British military (Winston Churchill was a descendant of the 2nd Duke of Marlborough) and they found an iconic visualization of manhood--complete with tattoo and they made the package look like a medal. It took time, but eventually it all kicked in and today--as it was 20 years ago--Marlboro is the initiation brand of choice among white teens.

DAVE CUNDIFF Alan largely answered my question. Any others for now?

JANET BRIGHAM Alan, have you committed your thoughts on these matters to print somewhere? I'd be interested to read more about this approach to tobacco use. And...any particular thoughts about smokeless?

ALAN BRODY: Well, the bulk of my work was delivered as a paper at the Popular Culture Association's annual convention in 1984. There are, I am told, numerous references to it in articles published by Alan Blum of Doctors Ought to Care. And then I am working, finally on turning it into a book. As for smokeless, while it is bad, it is also more revocable and distasteful enough to the average person that I see it as belonging to a separate subclass of the tobacco debate.

DAVE CUNDIFF: Alan, you suggest "peer pressure" or at least "peer influence" in teens who start smoking. That's what the industry says too...I think that argument is not only overrated but they use that formulation publicly to *deny* responsibility for teen smoking. Your work suggests that they also use it *manipulate* teen culture. Is that the case?

ALAN BRODY: Exactly, I believe that the INDUSTRY wants you to believe that teen pressure drives smoking adoption because that tends to absolve them of blame. There certainly is truth in that but it is too simple to explain it that way. If people belong to a group of teen smokers they are most likely going to smoke. But most teens belong to mixed groups--with smokers and without. The point is that the tobacco companies are simply trying to influence the teen influencers (that is after all how PR works) but the real issue is why any kind of teen influencer is interested in cigarettes in the first place. And the answer is because it delivers them accelerated access to the secrets, the mystery and the powers of adulthood. That is why I like to tell people that you never see teens in cigarette ads (anywhere in the world, really) because they WANT adults out there showing them the way. But if you wanted to TALK kids out of smoking, you WOULD want to use teens, with an attitude.

JANET BRIGHAM I've been interested in the Research Triangle Institute's findings lately indicating that those teens the most likely to initiate smoking are the more shy, isolated ones. I've always thought of smoking initiation as a peer-pressure process, in part, but their research has tended to turn my thinking on end.

ALAN BRODY: Well, my position--born out by the B&W documents--is that tobacco executives have long realized they are in the business of selling a mild sedative/upper with a strong psychological palliative capability based, really, on a form of advertised magical thinking. In other words psychological snake oil. So as the more active, athletic kids have been forced by the demands of their activities to stay away from smoke the shy, the troubled, the socially insecure are more like to become vulnerable--as indeed they may always have been. As for peer pressure, I think I answered that or did I?

JANET BRIGHAM So what's the snake-oil component? Nicotine does have a brief euphoric effect, and some antidepressant effect. What about it doesn't deliver what it's purported to deliver?

ALAN BRODY: Well, the ugly truth is that the addiction is actually part of the attraction. In essence, people make a legal deal with devil. They give up personal control and responsibility of a kind in return for being governed by the demands of an addiction. They can then turn to it in moments of stress, nervousness, uncertainty, insecurity etc. That is when the good god of Marlboro will descend in a cloud of smoke and waft them to a higher level. Its part of the tribal magic in initiation and like all initiations, we tend to relive it for the rest of our days. So in a ridiculous kind of way IT DOES WORK but that is not what they are telling kids. They are telling them everyone, kind of, is doing it so that is all you need to know. But in any case, the power of the cigarette is at a level outside of normal debate and so it rarely comes up. But it needs to.

DAVE CUNDIFF: Alan, what happens in the African tribes that you've studied when a young person is denied the chance to undergo "initiation rites" with his/her peer group?

ALAN BRODY In closed tribal societies i.e. where they have no alternative society to go to, they might as well kill themselves. They are simply not part of the tribe. The Trobriand Islanders (a Melanesian island group chronicled by Stanislaw Malinewski) in the earlier part of this century were known to climb up palm trees and jump off if they were denied access to the tribe. It is unusual that a tribe would deny a child initiation, but if they do they are an outcast. Literally.

DAVE CUNDIFF: Is the cigarette culture constituted of drives that powerful? Is there a U.S. counterpart to that power?

ALAN BRODY: The power is in the brand. Marlboro represents the American knight or samurai through the cowboy. This is really part of the culture's mythology. The tobacco company is simply manipulating it. We own the culture. We either don't know it or we don't know how to pull its levers.

ALAN BRODY What makes Gen X unique as a new smoking generation. To some extent this is what answers your very first question: why is this study worthwhile. We are not only learning about ourselves but also to anticipate changes in ourselves. Gen X is strange amalgam (unlike the 60's set) they are not creating their own milieu they are putting one together that looks like back to the future combined with a world wide sense of self, weariness and despair. They are no longer guaranteed the future of their parents, and they have been exposed to worldwide culture and they are eclectic about borrowing from it. They understand the principles of deconstruction--i.e. truth and received knowledge particularly of institutions is really a construct, not absolute truth. But they are too young and powerless to deal with most of this so they adopt it (tattoos, piercing and other world wide influences that would have been impossible before) without real commitment to the ideas behind it. As a result tobacco companies can bring in post-Disney archetypes to win over the trust and identification of the youth.

GENE BORIO: The Soho Arts Festival and Moonlight Tobacco is advertising on the Web...

ALAN BRODY: The new generation of brands like Moonlight, Red Kamel and Sedona are basically taking advantage of all of the above with the added element of tying them into the past in a way that says, if its been around so long it CAN'T be that bad.

GENE BORIO: We're almost at the end. any other questions, before we ask Alan what the future holds? Well, Alan--what about the future?

ALAN BRODY: I think we're going to be forced to put ourselves in the mindset of the youth at a much more sophisticated and realistic level. We are going to have to develop new channels to induct teens into adulthood. And we may have to make deals, essentially settlements with phenomena that we cannot overcome. You may see kids using patches and some smoking as a way of having it both ways. You may see a new generation of smokeless cigarettes that teens will try. If we have a sophisticated framework we may be able to deal with all of these realistically and constructively.

GENE BORIO: That about wraps us up here. I want to deeply thank Alan for a fascinating conference. And I hope your book is out soon! We need this knowledge.

JANET BRIGHAM When is the book due out? Who's publishing it?

ALAN BRODY We don't know yet but under certain circumstances I will be willing to share early releases. Oh, I would like to thank you, Gene and Dave.

JANET BRIGHAM I'll watch for it! Thanks for your ideas today, and please keep us posted on its progress so that we can take you up on your offer for early releases. I've enjoyed this today. 'Bye.

DAVE CUNDIFF Alan, I wanted to thank you for appearing...Yes, and I do want to and to thank *all* participants, and Gene...thank you for a great session. I hope you can share with us again, Alan.

GENE BORIO: Thanks, Alan. I just wanted to note, in regards to your martial analogies, that "Mar" is close to "Mars", and there is a cigarette named "Winston" and a cigar named "Churchill"

ALAN BRODY: Exactly! Remember, this was after WWII and these names (except Mars) had a powerful familiarity. Imagine owning a brand today called Powell. Why you could storm the market with this one!

GENE BORIO: I'm sure we'll be seeing more such names as the "micro-smoke" movement grows.

ALAN BRODY: Microsmoke, now there's concept. Its a good thing that a) Bill Gates (chairman of Microsoft Corporation) doesn't smoke and b) doesn't need another lawsuit.

GENE BORIO Ha!

ALAN BRODY: I was saying if you want to continue this conversation at another time you might want to think of step 2 which is the deconstruction of the actual brands: What do they mean, what are they saying and what does this tell you about the person? Important stuff if you want help an inveterate smoker quit.

*** end of conference transcript ***

Search News