Abstract
Philip Morris' new Altria web site, www.altria.com, states,
"As the manufacturer of a product intended for adults who smoke that has serious health effects, Philip Morris USA believes that it has a responsibility to help prevent kids from smoking...Philip Morris USA has a dedicated Youth Smoking Prevention department (YSP) that supports youth programs...and conducts ongoing research to help prevent youth smoking."
This memo by former Burson Marstellar employee-turned Philip Morris-consultant points out the real purpose of PM's youth anti-smoking and access programs, like Action Against Access (AAA):
"....By focusing on this [youth] approach, one can draw attention to the real reasons kids want to smoke, thereby robbing the other side of the ability to focus this issue on the wrong solutions..."
and
"...the real objective here, as nearly all the presentations [of youth anti-smoking programs] point out, is to rob the other side of their ability to use this issue as a generalized club which would hurt us."
Page 1: kdk49e00
JLindheim & Company St
Qi13i6J96 m6:16 PM 01i2
JLINDHEIM & COMPANY
832 Broadway
New York, New York 10003
PHONE: (212) 539-1262
FAX: (212) 539-1252
PLEASE NOTE OUR NEW ADDRESS, PHONE, AND FAX NUMBERS
March 3, 1996
TO: David Greenberg
FROM: J. Lindheim
RE: Youth Smoking
~ ~u-
~,--
~
I've looked over the Youth plans presented at Megeve and agree with you
that there are a number of good ideas there which deserve further
development. It was, as I had suspected, very useful to me to see this stuff
before talking to Linehan about the issue.
I was surprised how few of them put much emphasis on "working with
others to develop communications programs aimed at youth to discourage
them from smoking". This is, it seems, the heart of the Dutch program, and
it is sort of hinted at in the Belgian, Italian, and Spanish programs. (I suppose
you could include the German industry's ad campaign, but I wouldn't).
This area is to me the untapped possibility on this issue since it should be an
approach that a) "everyone can agree on" including the trade, the
government, the industry, b) makes a visible and tangible effort which the
public could feel and touch; and c) is in no way incompatible with all of our
positions on "why kids smoke" and how to effectively deal with the problem.
By focusing on this approach, one can draw attention to the real reasons why
N
CA
0
~
0
v
job
w
0
w
Page 2: kdk49e00
JLindheim & Gompany ? Qi1316i96 06:17 PM p 212
kids want to smoke, thereby robbing the other side of the ability to focus this
issue on the wrong solutions, eg. fiscality.
Look, for instance, at the French presentation. It does a superb job of
analyzing the tricky aspects of all the usual options. But, rather than do a
"voluntary AAA program with retailers" which is somehow supposed to
convince them not to sell to kids under 16 when there is no law to that effect,
why not take a Dutch approach and put together a panel of wisemen to
discover what kinds of messages and programs would really work to achieve
a reduction in teenage smoking in France?
As for AAA / access programs, I do find it hard to imagine them without a
legal age on the books. If I read the presentations correctly, that condition
only exists in Spain, and Holland is the only market suggesting it as an
option. My own view is that AAA is a uniquely US approach which is based
on the existence of minimum age laws and the need to enforce them. (It is
also an effort, as you know, to focus attention/regulation away from
marketing restrictions as the answer). I don't see why, in all the European
markets where you don't have such minimum age laws but you do already
have some fairly restrictive marketing restrictions (by code or by law), you
would put the emphasis on access when it is such a divisive issue with the
trade and, as is pointed out in one presentation, runs the risk of adding to
contraband and other problems.
Why not attack where we have consistently said the problem is --- on the
demand side. My understanding is that in both Italy and Spain there have
been fairly substantial declines in youth smoking -- why not give a grant to
someone to find out how this was achieved?
Final thought: the real objective here, as nearly all the presentations point
out, is to rob the other side of their ability to use this issue as a generalized
club which would hurt us. These presentations show that there is no one
right answer to how to do that -- each country is truly different and requires a
somewhat different approach. AAA is the U.S.'s.
