Tobacco Documents Online

c L PRINTERS' INK May 25, 1962 Cigarette ad ban lit big week for ad men Keeping an advertising boxseore last week began as a routine chore but quickly became an absorbing one, as a series of developments occurred which variously invoNved most segments of'f advertising and marketing. The discussion of the pros and! cons of an a& agency going public con- .tinued, and TV, a dependable per- former, provided some testy exchanges between network officials and the Dodd. committee. Meanwhile, marketing men were meeting for the usually reward- ing sessions of the National Industrial Conference Board and,, in, th•e truth and taste area, the Outdoor Advertising, Assn. of Americal came out with a new code of standards for its members. Back with TV, Ted Bates engaged in a dispute with ~ Westinghouse Broadcast- ing over the spacing of' competitive commercials. The most dramatic devel- opment, though, involved The R•eader's Digest: Coinciding with the appear- ance of! its article in the June issue firmly linking cigarette smoking with cancer, the Digest canceled all cigarette advertising in its foreign editions. Tobacco men jolted Publication of the article, entitled "Lung Cancer and Cibarettes,"' is by all odds the most potentially damaging in a series of blows at the tobacco indus- try. One clear indication of the magni- tude of the threat: sickening drops registered by tobacco stocks ('R. J'u Reynolds was off 3',d points) when word of the article leaked out' last week. The piece,, which summarizes a re- port by the British Royal! College of Physicians and unequivocally states that cigarette smoking is a cause of' lung cancer an& bronchitis and contributes to heart disease, cliinaxed' a series ot articles on cigarette smoking by the Digest. Publication; of a Digest article lauding the industry for bringing out filter cigarettes helped advance P.. Lorillard's Kent cigarettes, and was in- strumental in accelerating the trend! toward! high-filtration brands, with which the industry was able to recover from the setback it suffered in 1953-54 as a result of'the health controversy. Despite the mounting dtumfi're of criticism of cigarette smoking both here and', abroad, sales of smokes have riseni steadily since 1954. Last year, accord- ing to PRINTERS' I:.K's Wootten report, cigarette sales racked up ai record 490- billion units, some four per cent over 1960, and were expected to continue to grow world-wide in the decadee ahead. Whether or not the neww develop- ments would adversely affect sales this year was a matter for speculation. There is, however,, little question that they will intensify most tobacco com- panies' search for greater diversifica- tion, underscored by the recent vote by Lorillard stockholders to branch into non-tobacco products.f'or the first time. Another area for speculation was the effect on the expanded interna- tional operations of U.S. tobacco com, panies of! mounting legislative action by foreign countries against smoking. Recently considered a growth area by domestic-cigarette m-nnuf'acturers; thee foreign marketplace now appears to be faced with even more new t'hreats. Effect of the Digest article got added! impetus from the company's~ announce- ment that it'was accepting no more cigarette advertising in its international editions after present contracts are ful- filled. While the volume of 215 pages of tobacco-products advertising carried last year, at a gross value of $191,000 (according to the Rome Reports) does not represent tremendous revenue, the psychologicali effect of the move has caused some concern among cigarette ad men. Among the companies that used the Digest to advertise their prod- ucts abroad last year: P. Lorillard, Philip Morris, Amer~icam Tobacco Co. Asked for tobacco, industry comment on the article, George B. Allen, presi- dent of the Tobacco Institute Inc., Washington, D.C., issued a characteris- tic statement via, the institute's public relations counsel, Hill & Knowlton: "This article purports to give the latest findings' concerning lung cancer and cigarettes. If true, this would be of intense interest to us and everyone else. Unfortunately, the fact is that the article is merely a review of still an- other review of ol& material that has appeared in past years. No new re- search findings are given: In fact, many of the really latest research findings bearing, on the unsolved problem of lung cancer are not presented. This is true also of the March report'of the Royali College of Physicians, from which, the Digest's article is largely drawn. That renort :s admittedly a summary and interpretation of! previous- ly pubiished material. As the March 10 British: Medical Jeurnal said,, 'The report dues not pre.SCnt any nea ur.- published f'acts."' Memos and murder • TV, as tobacco, has regnlarl+y hePn 1003044403