Pause for a second and consider where your image of smoking came from. The strategies that advertising companies, hired by multi-billion dollar tobacco companies employ to seduce people such as you into smoking cigarettes effectively glamorizes the image of cigarettes and smoking then.
You may not be aware of how this image was carefully cultivated by highly skilled marketers and advertisers, who study the human psychology and use it to spread the image of smoking that lures people to start smoking.
Then 70s, the US Congress passed a law banning the advertising of cigarettes and other tobacco products on radio and on television. However, print ads in magazines were still allowed. All advertisements were required to display a health warning from the Surgeon General. Although not being able to advertise on TV may have been a setback for tobacco corporations, it was only a minor one. They continued to promote cigarette smoking in indirect and more subtle ways, with very clever tactics.
What are some of the ways they advertise indirectly? To begin with, they found great success in creating “ads” of their products by embedding them in movies. Lois Lane did not smoke in the Superman comic book series, but she chain-smoked Marlboros all through the movie Superman II. That same movie showed the Marlboro brand approximately forty times, including scenes in which Superman threw a villain into a Marlboro truck. Phillip Morris reportedly only paid 42,000 dollars for the ad to be placed, a small price to pay considering the number of people that saw it.
Phillip Morris wasn’t the only one. Between 1990 and 1997, more than 80 percent of each year’s top twenty-five films included tobacco use, often targeting specific brands. The main character of the Disney movie Who Framed Roger Rabbit smokes Lucky Strikes. Even the father in Honey I Shrunk the kids smoked Camel cigarettes. The popular sequel Ghostbusters II includes both packs of Marlboros and Kools.
The power of this subtle form of advertising is very strong. According to the Associated film Promotions, “Seeing a product, even for a second, in a realistically dramatic setting in which the viewer is already emotionally involved leaves an invaluable impression.” Young people, especially under the age of twenty, who make up about 40 percent of moviegoers, are especially susceptible to being influenced by what they see in theaters and on television. For example, sales for the candy Reese’s Pieces skyrocketed after it was spotlighted in the movie ET.
The truth is that these cigarette placements in movies send a more powerful message than printed ads. They certainly make more of an impression on young people who want to dress and look like their favorite celebrities. As a result, they often want to smoke like their favorite celebrities.
In the late 1990s, a legal agreement in signed in forty-six states ensured that tobacco companies could no longer legally pay for product placement in movies. But due to a loophole in the agreement, tobacco companies still have managed to make impressions to make their way to the audiences.
Other indirect methods of advertising used by the tobacco industry include sponsoring live televised sports events, direct-mail campaigns, etc. Another tactic they use is the use of tobacco brand names on products such as clothing. The Marlboro Classics clothing line- a wide range of shirts, jackets, and accessories all include the logos and/or ads associated with the Marlboro tobacco company.
What it comes down to is this- tobacco companies invest serious and significant capital to make us think of positive images, be it sexiness, beauty, intelligence, independence, wealth, popularity, every time we see a cigarette. The money they pay is a bet that these positive associations created in our mind with these images and tobacco will result us in buying their product. And it works. No doubt.
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