Tobacco Documents Online

This letter sent to the Brown & Williamson Tobacco Corporation's marketing department exposes in detail the behind-the-scenes activities cigarette companies go through to get cigarettes placed into major movies.

It is quite revealing. Little do today's moviegoers realize the extent to which they are being be advertised to when viewing major movies. Little do they realize either that (much to the corporations' glee) they are actually paying for the "privilege" of absorbing this unique subliminal advertising.

The writer of this document explains to B & W:

"Cigarettes as Props

1. Recently there have been a number of high-visibility feature films in which one or more of the central characters smoke a particular brand of cigarettes. This has been happening because cigarette manufacturers have been paying for the exposure. Following are some notable examples:

Movie Actor/Character Brand

"Continental Divide" John Belushi Marlboro "Superman II" Margot Kidder Marlboro "Pennies from Heaven" Steve Martin Camel "Prince of the City" Treat Williams & Merit or key supporting players Marlboro "Absence of Malice" Sally Fields Carleton

Participation in movies is not limited merely to actors smoking a particular brand. For example, 'Superman II' also included a classic fight scene in which Superman and the bad guys throw a Marlboro truck back and forth at each other on Lexington Avenue. This truck was produced solely for the movie and exists nowhere else. There are other instances of cigarette advertising serving as part of the scenery (c.f. 'Neighbors', 'Pennies from Heaven')."

Under the section entitled "RATIONALE," the writer explains that:

"By appearing in movies, RALEIGH will be receiving an implied third party endorsement. In the movie context this endorsement is considered very impactful since unlike the passive exposure of advertising and PR, the movie exposure requires a pro-active role for the viewer (i.e, the viewer must _go_ to the theatre and _pay_ to watch the films)."

He also explains how the placement of cigarettes in the movies favorably impacts the audience towards the brand"

"...Although the placement _may_ not be consistent with RALEIGH's image, the placements will almost certainly be consistent ith some psycho framework into which the viewer wants to project. The Brand can become identified with something or someone that is desireable to a specific viewer set."

According to this document, the practice of paying to place products in movies is practically ubiquitous. The writer lists some other products whose manufacturers and/or service providers have placed them in movies: "Coppertone, Budweiser, Coors, Apple Computers, Kawasaki, United Airlines and American Airlines are a few other sponsors who have recently bought into films."

This 1991 market research "creative presentation" was written for the Philip Morris tobacco company to market a new brand of cigarettes called "Battistoni" to young adults.

The research concludes that young adults of the time were heavily influenced by the rock star Madonna, craved control over their lives and suffered from "dimmed financial hopes." Building on these conclusions, the report states that this need for some sense of control over their world led young adults to create social action groups Greenpeace and Act Up.

The writers state that Philip Morris's advertising should "empower" young adults with "permission to smoke":

"In this era when smoking is under attack as dirty imposition on a just-say-no society, smokers need to be empowered with permission to smoke. For young adults, the single most powerful argument that can be made in defense of smoking is, 'no matter what others say, I am entitled to enjoy my pleasure because I chose it....' With the exception of Camel--who well understands defiance as part of the smoking experience--no cigarette offers smokers a way of saying, '______ off, it's my life and my pleasure....'

In a blantant attempt to disguise the addictive aspects of smoking, the advertising plan says the company must manipulate the "target" (young adult consumers) into believing that it is " 'correct' or socially appropriate to smoke," and that that the brand must "help him justify his belief that the decision to smoke is calculated, reflecting his own free will" and help him "avoid feeling that a cigarette company is inducing him to smoke with advertising that 'insults his intelligence,' telling him what to do.

The writer cites the Joe Camel campaign as a prime example of how a cigarette company can respond to the new anti-smoking environment in a defiant way that appeals to younger people:

"In the U.S.A., Camel's new positioning reflects an understanding of how to respond to the anti-smoking environment in a fresh, new way that engages the sympathies of a certain segment of young Americans. The Smooth Character's mischievous wink endorses a defiant juvenile delinquency that sums up a certain response to authority and growing up."

This paper offers insight into how advertising companies play on human frailties to boost sales of a deadly product. It also shows the part advertising companies have played in helping tobacco companies undermine public health messages about tobacco.

Tobacco company documents about marketing to Hispanics for some reason reveal a much stronger concern with this group than any other that cigarette advertising aimed at men avoid depicting any nuances of homosexuality among the males in the ads. Great care is taken to focus-group test cigarette ads aimed at Hispanic males to "screen" the ads for images that could in any way be construed as being gay. This R. J. Reynolds memo is an example of such focus group testing:

"The purpose of these focus groups was to specifically address the issue of homosexuality that arose in previous focus groups. Because masculine imagery is an important element in the Hispanic campaign, revisions were made in the generic executions to change elements contributing to the homosexual image...All groups felt that the relationship between the models in the ads was perfectly natural and that no homosexuality could be implied...

The Mexican American ads successfully communicated the desired user imagery of a masculine, hard-working man...

...As was the case with Mexican-Americans, Puerto Rican smokers did not feel that the models could be regarded as homosexuals... Respondents also stated that it was unlikely that an advertising campaign would ever use a homosexual as a model...

Cuban smokers felt that the relationship between the three models in the ad was perfectly natural and that no homosexuality could be implied. The masculine imagery of the models was unquestioned...

The memo also shows how RJR also took some care to avoid overt depictions of construction sites in ads aimed at Hispanic males, and to associate the cigarette with a jobs that Hispanics perceive as more "upscale" than a construction job, such as a supervisor or architect.

This report on the effects of cigarette advertising on consumer behavior was commissioned by Imperial Tobacco and RJR-Macdonald of Canada. It was written by Joel B. Cohen, Ph.D. (Distinguished Service Professor of Marketing, Adjunct Professor of Anthropology and Director, Center for Consumer Research) of the University of Florida. In the report, Dr. Cohen disputes the industry's oft-repeated claim that its advertising is aimed only at getting existing adult smokers to switch brands. Cohen says,

"The need to replace smokers who either quit or are casualties of smoking has led many to question cigarette industry claims that their advertising is intended primarily to encourage brand switching...the U.S. evidence indicates that the tobacco industry spends about $9 per person per day for advertising and promotion, and only 10% of smokers switch brands in an average year...Accordingly, such expenditure--purely for brand switching--would seem to be difficult to justify economically...." [Pages 3-4] In Section 1.40 Cohen poses the question, "Couldn't the advertising only make the particular cigarette attractive for existing smokers?" Response: "The answer is essentially 'No,'" and explains why this is the case.

Cohen ridicules the industry's claim that cigarette advertising would only appeal to adults who already smoke, saying,

"Nonsmokers, and particularly adolescents, cannot be made immune to advertising effects...[the industry's argument] is as if a magic curtain could be put in place to shield children, teenagers and others from the impact of these appeals. No convincing theoretical argument or empirical evidence has yet been introduced by the cigarette industry to demonstrate that otherwise effective advertising is mysteriously ineffective for adolescents who have yet to become smokers. Until such evidence is provided, this proposition cannot be taken seriously." [Page 8]

Thus it appears that RJR-Macdonald and Imperial hired an advertising expert who concluded that the companies' most common arguments about the reach and effects of their advertising cannot not possibly be true.

In 1994, the R.J. Reynolds tobacco company "orchestrated a massive, unprecedented public relations blitz," (1) aimed at linking tobacco control efforts directly to Prohibition in the public mind, even though the prohibition of tobacco has never been a stated goal of public health authorities in the U.S.. (Prohibition was an American social movement in the 1920s and 1930s in the U.S. that attempted to eliminate the sale and use of alcohol. It is generally considered to have been extreme and to have ended in failure.) RJR called the effort "Project Breakthrough." It was described this way in a planning document: "PROJECT BREAKTHROUGH

1. Objective: create a campaign which frames and answers this question: Does America want prohibition? Will we tolerate a puritanical wave to infringe, to restrict and possibly to eliminate personal freedoms and individual choices?

2.Goals:

* reframe the debate: efforts all aim at return to prohibition, either front-door or back-door.

* make prohibition a clear and present danger now in our society; give it pejorative currency similar to the tax and spend issue in the early 1980s.

* directly tie the anti-smoker rhetoric with the stigma of prohibition; that's what they really want.

* spread the stigma to others: who's next; alcohol, beef, pork, private property, logging, fur, cholesterol, motorcycles, and others.

The campaign had several different phases designed generally to instill fear in Americans that rules restricting smoking would lead to increased crime and smuggling, economic failure, inability to purchase and use a host of other products, and the elimination of civil rights and freedoms.

Sample Project Breakthrough ads can be seen at the following URLs:

"COME OUT SLOWLY SIR, WITH YOUR CIGARETTE ABOVE YOUR HEAD." http://legacy.library.ucsf.edu/tid/ogp61d00

"TODAY IT'S CIGARETTES. TOMORROW?" http://legacy.library.ucsf.edu/tid/dhp61d00

"NO SMOKING. IS THE GOVERNMENT GOING TOO FAR?" http://legacy.library.ucsf.edu/tid/ehp61d00

RJR ran these ads, and others like them, in 32 major American daily newspapers, plus magazines like TIME, U.S. News and World Report,(2) Vanity Fair,(3) ethnically targeted publications like Blacks in Law Enforcement,(4), and popular publications like Rolling Stone and People.

Other campaign components included direct mailings to individuals and a "video petition" sent to legislators in Washington, D.C. The campaign appears to have lasted about 4 years. RJR considered the effort successful, according to an October, 1994 update on the project prepared by Thomas Griscom, Executive Vice President of External Relations and sent to Charles M. Harper, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of RJR Nabisco Holdings Corp. Griscom's report claimed the campaign resulted in decreased support for raising the federal tax on cigarettes, generated 29,000 calls to a toll-free hotline, and put the Occupational Safety and Health Administration on the defensive, among other successes.

"Project Breakthrough" appears to have been RJR's response to a number of public health initiatives occuring at the time, including the broadcast of an ABC news program ("Day One") about spiking of nicotine in cigarettes, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration's efforts to regulate nicotine as a drug, a proposal to fund health care nationally through an increase in the federal cigarette tax.

This document shows that the creation and spread of the arguments that smoking laws are a form of creeping prohibition can be linked directly to RJR.