Anne Landman's Collection
Marlboro Qualitative Image Study Saudi Arabia 930000
Abstract
This Philip Morris marketing document evaluates Marlboro advertising to find ways to make the imagery more appealing to young Saudi Arabian men. The idea was to find out what emotional, psychological and cultural needs and values young male Saudis have, and then determine how PM could exploit these in their cigarette advertising.
Page 39 of the document (Bates No. 2501055413) reports on reactions of Saudi men to a Marlboro ad that depicted three cowboys leaning on a fence and talking. The middle cowboy held coiled up rope in his hand. The report says, "Values disliked [about this ad] were...the ropes, which gave uncomfortable feeling -- ropes are used to bind people and hang them in Saudi Arabia."
The report also generalizes about Saudi men:
"There is a strong thread of violence just below the surface of the Arab personality, linked to ideas of vengeance and the protection of property (including women) but there is at the same time a desire to suppress this in favour of the more acceptable public face of masculinity, which is more calm and controlled."
The report defines values of Saudi men:
"The aspiration for them is very definitely to have friends who have status and wealth - and especially a big car. Belonging to such a peer group, even if you do not personally have the wealth, enables you to enjoy the reflected status. Cigarettes it seems are often shared, and within the peer group there is also pressure to smoke the same brand..."
A brief discussion of smoking and health in the document reveals a belief among Saudi men that certain types of cigarettes are "healthier" than others, and indicates that Saudi smokers may lack key information about smoking and health in general:
"There is ample evidence that smoking is regarded [among Saudis] as harmful, although this was not expressed directly, it was indirectly through the description of the personality of brands...For Marlboro Red smokers, if you smoke a light cigarette, then you are not strong/healthy enough to be able to smoke a strong cigarette. For Marlboro Lights smokers, if you smoke a strong cigarette, then you are stupid, ignorant."
While it is not surprising that a corporation would tailor its advertising to appeal to foreign cultures, by the time this document was written (1993) tobacco use had already long been labeled by authorities worldwide as a major public health problem. Despite this, PM continued to emphasize spreading the use of tobacco in foreign countries (as well as in the U.S.). It is also interesting to see how American cigarette companies scrutinize foreign cultures and pinpoint the emotional and psychological needs and held by people of these cultures to devise ways of better exploiting them.
Fields
- Quotes
MAIN FINDINGS:
1. The major key values of the young Saudis are masculinity, wealth, family life, materialism and spirituality.
2. Dualism, and the necessity to balance between opposites, is an over-riding characteristic of the Arab culture. It plays an important part in enabling a person to find his place in society, by fixing acceptable limits for his public and private behaviour.
3. Marlboro's strengths, many of which come more from the brand's smokers than its advertising or promotions, are elegance, masculinity, wealth, status, strength and experience. Marlboro's weaknesses are mainly the opposites of its strengths, such as aggressivity, pride, inelegance, a loner, irresponsibility, inexperience, overly strong and rough.
4. Marlboro's advertising currently lacks elegance, wealth, friendship, pride and sometimes useful movement. It also shows a number of items with negative associations for the average Arab, such as ropes (hanging), gloves (importance of handshake), or Zippo lighters (inelegant). Other associations should be further developed, such as the mountains (implied strength) or the horses (related skill, control, and positive animal/man relationship)
5. Major trends likely to affect Marlboro in the near future, are an even greater move to Islam, and the rejection of Western culture; the selective adoption of Western technology, rather than values; growing health consciousness; increasing desire for a family and the then attributed place in society.
...Key brands of other product categories to which consumers attach emotional values are:
Watches - Rado, Seiko, Cartier (Rolex was mentioned by relatively few)
Sunglasses - Rayban, Cartier
Cars - Mercedes
The values that are ascribed to all these brands in general, are quality, durability, elegance, expensiveness, beautiful appearance, functionality.
Mercedes in some ways may be the closest of all these brands to Marlboro, although it lacks the violence that we shall show later to be an undercurrent in the Marlboro personality. Mercedes' other values are seen as being:
• strength • fast / dangerous • would feel great in it • comfortable • for people with good character • luxuriousness
There are those who, for pragmatic reasons, do not use Marlboro (they want to save money) and do not see the value in paying extra for the brand. These same people, however, strongly aspire to brands like Rado, the difference being that cigarettes do not have the durability of a watch, and so are not a lasting symbol that can be shown to parents, family and friends as a measure of success...
The most extreme reaction to the masculinity is found among the new Marlboro Lights smokers, who tend to see the brand as the most violent, and as a consequence see the user of the brand as ignorant, stupid and uneducated. This amounts to a feeling that the usage of Red for this group is not at all an intelligent choice, although they agree that the brand is for wealthy people. This at first sight may appear incongruous, but it must be remembered that there are a lot of people capable of affording the badges of affluence without the refinement that these might suggest... The violence can imply other things about the Marlboro user:
He lives on his own, and has no friends - at the extreme he lives on his own in the jungle. Such perceptions are extremely negative, given the importance of friends in Arab society. Also the solitary nature makes this person dangerous - being married reduces the temptation to sin, and so the solitary man is a threat to women - he is seen as playing around, flirting with women. He would therefore be a poor example to others.
• He would be nervous, uncontrolled, unable to exert the calm authority which is aspired to.
He would be arrogant, boastful. This stems, we think, from a feeling of lack of substance in the personality. He thinks that he is wealthy, he thinks that he is elegant, but there is little or nothing in the mix to substantiate these. The outward appearance of the cigarette itself is not elegant, and the brand's advertising does not currently support this either.
- Company
- Philip Morris
- Author
- Philip Morris EEMA (Eastern Europe, Middle East and Africa)
- Recipient
- Nelson, C.
- Rebib, M.
- Schedel, HW (Vice President)1993 Middle East/NA/Levant/Malta
- White, J.
- Attinger, F (PM Marketing Services, Manager, Middle East, Africa Turkey)Headquartered at Lausanne HQ
- Ferguson, K (Vice President, Marketing and Corporate Affairs)1993
- Gembler, Andreas (VP, PM Europe 1996, President of EEMA Region, 1993)1996 VP for Philip Morris Europe from February 1, 1990 to June 7, 1993. President of EEMA Region, Lausanne, in 1993. Executive VP from June 7, 1993 until at least June 28, 1996.
- Mand, S.
- Region
- Saudi Arabia
- Litigation
- Stmn/Produced
- Named Organization
- Ford
- Gucci
- Honda
- Mercedes
- Rado
- Rayban
- Rolex
- Seiko
- Toyota
- Zippo
- Anbar Casino
- Bmw
- Cartier
- Type
- MRRT, MARKET RESEARCH REPORT
- DRAW, DRAWING
- LIST, LIST
- OUTL, OUTLINE
- QUES, QUESTIONNAIRE
- ROUT, ROUTING SLIP
- Subject
- marketing
- marketing research
- marketing strategy
- advertising
- advertising activity
- advertising message
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