Tobacco Documents Online

Another activity purely outside the SOSAS scope was the California Referendum. IIere, unlike the rest of the United States, specific legislation was pending and clearly the most effective communication related to the specific defects of this legislation. Considerable thought had been given to some groups that might be responsive to and supportive of the industry position. RJR undertook a statewide campaign on "Pride in Tobacco" and developed plans for employee co~unications. The charge to SOSAS was, therefore, to develop a conm~unicatio~s strategy outside of these specific areas. Considerable investigation was undertaken to deter- mine whether there were other sub-groups in the population in which SOSAS might become involved because of an identity of interest. Although voluntary smokers' rights organizations existed, it appeared inadvisable to reduce their credibility through industry involvement. Cooperation with groups not economically involved with the industry gave little evidence of practi- cality at a national level.

Essentially, it appeared that the targets for a response by the industry would ~nvolve the public at large, °opinion leaders, and possibly the business colmmunity as potential specific targets. The most critical problem was the question of the nature of the response itself. The basic SOSAS publ~c opinion research had indicated six major issue areas contributing to the present anti-smoking effect: i) Passive Smoking Issue 2) Annoyance/Courtesy Issue 3) Social Cost Issue 4) Declining Images of Smo]{ing/Smoker Self-Image 5) Government Role in Smoking Issue 6) Credibility of Tobacco Industry Research had indicated that mass communication programs would have little impact in two of the six areas: ~ Social Cost; ~ Credibility of Tobacco Industry In the absen'be of a specific place of legislation as a target, an effective response appeared to in- volve only four viable options as follows:

i) Defense of smokers' rights as J.ndividuals and the preservation of their freedom of choice. 2) Communication of courtesy as a solution to the problem as an alternative to.mandatory legislation. 3) Co~nunication of the concept that the relation- ship between smokers and non-smokers is an individual matter which should not be subject to government interference. 4) Communicating the fact that tobacco smoke does not in fact adversely affect the health of non- smokers. The research indicated that all of these had some viability but virtually every other communication suggested over the entire investigation appeared to be contra-indicated by the research data. At one point, considerable consideration was given to a campaign urging "Moderation" in smoking, an approach that had been successfully employed by the alcoholic beverage industry.

Unfortunately, whatever may be the merit of such an approach, it is frought with legal difficulties as well as having doubtful application in the passive smoking issue. Based on the December focus groups, BBDO began writing ads to the four basic positioning statements. On Uanuary 24 a meeting was held in Winston-Salem with Jim Peterson, where the Agency presented 24 print ads (3 ads each of 8 campaign ideas written to 4 strategies). Max Crohn supplied detail Legal comments. Mr. Peterson invited the Agency to present the creativ~ to Messrs. Sticht and St'okes in early February. February 1978 In examining the four potentially viable arguments above, it became clear that it was important to understand what people meant when they expressed the belief that non-smokers' health could be affected by the activities of smokers. There appears to be little doubt that many people are annoyed by other people's smoke. And there is some evidence that there are those who actually i~ave physical discomfort in the presence of the smoke of others. O

If this were the limits of the problem, arguments about smokers' rights and campaigns for courtesy and solving the problem on a one-to-one basis could be expected to have considerable validity. After all, many things that people do are annoying to others but not every annoyance calls for restrictive legis- lation. The problem revealed by the research, however, is that both among non-smokers and smokers there is a prevalent belief that serious and fatal disease can be caused by other people's smoke. This is clea~ly the area in which the subtle propa- ganda of anti-cigarette forces have been enormously affective. Responsible authorities and.medical re- searchers have been careful not to state this specifically. What they have done is permit lay people in the anti-cigarette movement to hurl those charges without contradiction. The result being that 71% of non-smokers and 51% of smokers have come to believe that it is true. If it were true, Of course, it would be difficult to argue against restrictive legislation on smoking. The non-smoker's right to live would certainly supersede the smoker's right, to smoke. The non-smoker could reasonably refuse to negotiate on a personal basis a matter involving life or death. -]3-

Likewise, a smoker holding this belief, as 51% appear to do, finds himself in an indefensible position in asserting his rights or protesting restrictive legis- lation. On February 2, a meeting, of the SOSAS was conviened at BBDO. In attendance were Hudnall Christopher, C. A. Tucker, Griff Harlow and Richard Ryan from RJRT; Tom Dillon, Lew Pringer and Dave Robins from BBDO. It was the conclusion of this group that under prevailing conditions a "courtesy" response alone would be unsatisfactory, since it was necessary to clearly establish• first of all that the smoker was It was the concern of the SOSAS group that unless an informed public was able to reject the notion that smoke was harmful to non-smokers, that over the long range legislative restrictions on smoking in the presence of others would be unavoidable. And apart from formal legislation, extreme pressure might be brought to bear even affecting, smoking in a private household. Acting upon this, the SOSAS group endeavored to determine if it were possible to develop a clear-cut, credible, and fully s~bstantiated statement on the subject.

This turned out to be more difficult than it might appear. i) It is almost impossible to legally and logically state that ~ny substance whatever is harmless to man. This is true of. foods, food additives and every other environmental factor. The most that can be said with certainty about anything is that it has never been demonstrated to be harmful. This may appear to be hair-splitting, but it had enormous practical significance in connection with any future litigation that might arise. 2) While for practical purposes, smoke does not affect the health of non-smokers, some medical authorities believe that some small minorities of people with pre-existing physical problems might be adversely affected by ambient smoke. For example, it has been stated that anyone with emphysema can be a{ least temporarily affected by any foreign particles or gases in the air. For these reasons it was believed more prudent to c~mmunicate the following concept:. OTHER PEOPLE'S SMOKE }]AS NEVER BEEN SHOWN TO CAUSE D~SEASE IN NON-SMOKERS. The phrase "cause disease" was fe].t critical, o O

While it ma~ have been more attractive to say "affect the health", it was believed doubtful that we could get a consensus as to what constitutes health. Some doctors maintain that merely personal irritation is unhealthy. However, research indicated that the public felt that non-smokers could actually get such things as lung cancer and heart disease as a direct result of breathing other people's cigarette smoke. Therefore, it was agreed that "cause disease" would form the basis of the primary SOSAS communication. Another problem with the passive smoking issue was credibility. Qualitative research indicated that the tobacco industry suffered from lack of credibility regarding smokers' health. Therefore, it was agreed that instant substantiation, in the form of inde- pendent expert witness, must accompany the SOSAS message. At that time in February, the need for substantiation was the weakest link in the SOSAS project. Although a large file-of st~stantiation existed, many of the statements were poorly phrased and full of qualifi- cations. There was no way the public could assess the validity of our souQces. Therefore it was agreed that some study must be conducted by impaccably autnori~ati|_ sources ol~ the opinions of medical experts, rega~.-d~n9 passive smoking and disease. Until .... . .................... .................................

such a study could be conducted i£ was decided to use existing secondary source substantiation for the time being, and to phase into more concise substanti- ation when it became available. The need for clear and unmistahable substantiation was underscored especially since the plan called for advertising as the eventual vehicle to communicate the SOSAS proposition. The problem here was twofold, as follows: i) advertising's low inherent credibility and, 2) it was observed that credible substantiation' -" ~~'~ " " ly " copy that could resist readership, print being the only medium open to our message. Still an exhaustive copy development program com- menced involving the basic passive smoking pro- position with myriad executional approaches. Ads of varying sizes and shapes were developed with executions differing from cartoon characters to real people to celebrities to straight concept ads con- taining no visuals other than print. On February 2-3, W. McGuire, Yale Psychology .Professor, reviewed the i0 advertising campaigns in New York ~ith BBDO and RJR personnel. The discussions conf~.rmed -].7-

several major principles guiding "issue" advertising and suggestions were offered to increase the comJnuni- cation impact for certain 'campaigns. Further dis- cussions were planned to subjectively reduce the number of campaigns for subsequent testing. On February I0, Agency Mhnagement gave a presentation of SOSAS creative development to date to the RJR Public Relations Management. On February i0, a meeting was held with Messrs. Sticht and Stokes attending. A limited selection of SOSAS creative was presented (i ad each for 6 campaign ideas). Agency Management presented BBDO's position regarding issue versus several other viable positions.. The presentation was favorably received and general approval was given to refine the creative for eventual copy testing. On February 14 BBDO conducted, a hotline on the meaning of the word "disease". Conclusion: "Disease is what you can catch; what you do to yourself is not a disease." On February 22 a meeting was held at BBDO between RJR Legal (Max Crohn, Ed Jacobs, William Shinn) and Agency Legal and Management to discuss and refine copy from the February i0 meeting. Among other things it was o ~.greed that the basic "<!isease" c].aim must be qnalified o and that the Sul-geon Gene~'al "Warning" label would .~