"Why The Massachusetts Anti-Cigarette Campaign Won't Work" by Alan Brody
Why The Massachusetts Anti-Cigarette Campaign Won't Work
by Alan BrodyOctober 3, 1998
The state of Massachusetts deserves credit for taking on the lying tobacco companies with a hard-hitting anti-smoking ad campaign. Unfortunately, campaigns like this don't really work.
The much heralded anti-tobacco campaign in California from 1989 to the present seemed to work at first. It was every bit as hard-hitting as the Massachusetts campaign documenting 29 year-old Pam Laffin's emphysema. But eventually the realities of the tobacco business caught up with them and teen smoking was actually shown to rise.
According to a report by Dr. John Pierce of UC San Diego and published in the Journal of American Medical Association (Sep. 9) the California campaign actually lead to a 23% increase in teenage smoking even though it appeared to succeed at first.
There are many reasons why fighting tobacco with anti-tobacco ads can easily backfire. Many are bureaucratic. But I would like to focus on marketing reasons, as I learned them from the researchers that taught the tobacco companies in the first place.
You Can't Win by Fighting Your Opponents' War
Anti-tobacco groups can afford to advertise, but tobacco companies can afford to advertise more. That means they win, and since smoking is a lure, just bringing up the topic a lot tends to encourage people to try it. Then they get hooked. Tobacco wins more.
Fatal Warnings May Actually Be Fatal Attraction
Will Florence Griffith-Joyner's untimely death discourage teens from taking up track? Did Christopher Reeve's tragic fall discourage horse riding? Have serious football injuries kept away players?
People tend to calculate the odds of calamity in their own favor. Teens often don't calculate at all. If warnings worked, then the blunt messages on cigarette packs would long ago have discouraged our 50 million smokers. Talking about death has the perverse effect of raising tobacco's "spirit power."
Tobacco is Merchandised -- not Advertised
The real push in cigarette marketing today is at the point of sale. No matter what is said on TV, the reality of the 7-Eleven, gas station, supermarket or drug store is that smoking is a staple of our lives. Cigarettes offer you something for your troubles while anti-tobacco messages give nothing. Add a cool jacket or a t-shirt with an anti-authoritarian message and you've got something.
At bottom these anti-smoking campaigns misunderstand the phenomenon of smoking. They think smokers are idiots who were lied to by tobacco companies. The reality is that smokers welcome the "lie" because to them it is not a lie but wish fulfillment.
They want consolation for not being thin enough, strong enough, happy enough, macho enough or old enough. Cigarettes offer that and the ads exist to buttress their rationalizations and enhance their sense of dignity. Both the smoker and the tobacco companies are in cahoots which means the net result of these anti-tobacco ads is to bond them -- which makes them seem cozy enough to attract more smokers.
To generations of teens that desperately want to be inducted into adulthood cigarettes offer a time-honored rite of passage and a means to handle their insecurities. Just saying no, does nothing for the teen that might be a candidate for Prozac but settles on a $2 a day cigarette habit instead. What do you say to the proud misfit who latches onto Marlboro, the feminist with fluctuating weight who goes for Virginia Slims, or the teen with raging the hormones gravitating toward Camel?
The other assumption is that people want to be healthy and live forever. Unfortunately, people often harbor a negative side. Tobacco researchers have long understood the self-destructive force of smokers and how cigarettes, by offering pleasure and pain, offers a peculiar way of managing it. These anti-smoking campaigns ignore this phenomenon and consistently fail for that reason.
Here are some things anti-smoking groups can do.
Make Alliances Not War
National anti-tobacco advertising should be done in conjunction with tobacco's natural enemies: drug companies that selling quit-smoking products. They already advertise on prime time TV with hard-hitting anti-smoking ads. As profit-making enterprises their ads will always be better tested, executed and more consistent than any public-spirited bureaucracy.
Give Teens Mastery
For teens, smoking is, at bottom, compensation for teens robbed of a traditional rite of passage into adulthood. They also seek real knowledge -- the secrets of the "tribe." We should develop a national system of support groups from sports to arts using acknowledged experts that provide induction into adulthood through certification, mastery and social acceptance.
Be Realistic Not Moralistic
The real enemy then is not so much smoking as it is the addiction. If necessary, we should allow teens a revocable encounter with smoking. The body can recover from moderate amounts of smoking but addiction makes that a rarity. For many, the temporary psychological lure of smoking is just too strong. But after the need has passed they remain addicted. Making nicotine-based cigarettes hard for teenagers to get, while a non-addicting smoke that offered all the psychological trappings became easy to get, may be socially desirable as the lesser of all other evils. If potential smokers feel less beleaguered about morality, they may feel disposed to confront the real problems that underlie the smoking urge and seek out therapy.
Tobacco researchers learned in the 30's and 40's that smoking is a deep issue with roots in religion and spirituality that addresses a human need. The only way you can fight tobacco is to take into account each of its attributes -- whether you despise them or not -- and provide a viable response not a finger-wagging. Otherwise, we are just blowing moral smoke.
Alan Brody is the author of the tobacco marketing book Cigarette Seduction published by www.tobacco.org
Copyright A. Brody, 1998
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