What chance does a grassroots antismoking campaign really have against the sophisticated, sleek communications, and moneyed coffers of big tobacco companies? Smoking is seductive, ritualistic, and social. Characters chain smoke contemplatively in 1960s’ French New Wave cinema. Rough and tumble iconic smokers graced American television and film for years. Cigarettes practically sell themselves. As BR, the fictional tobacco salesman shouts in the movie Thank You for Smoking, “We don’t sell Tic Tacs, we sell cigarettes. And they’re cool, available, and addictive! The job is almost done for us!” (Thank You for Smoking quotes 2015).
Beyond the smoke and mirrors of big tobacco’s glamor stands a grim reality: each year, smoking kills six million people worldwide; smoking is also the cause of respiratory illnesses for thousands of others (“Fast Facts About Smoking” 2015). In the United States, it is the largest preventable killer and is responsible for more deaths than from car accidents, illegal drugs, murder, and AIDS combined (“Toll of Tobacco in the U.S. Fact Sheet” 2015). In addition to death, tobacco use leads to premature aging, rotting teeth, hair loss, sagging skin, and yellow eyes (“Fast Fact About Smoking” 2015). And smoking causes a substantial burden to national health care costs. Tobacco costs the United States more than $170 billion in health care expenditures and $151 billion in lost productivity each year (Xu et al. 2014).
While public relations and advertising contributed to the rise of the tobacco business (Public Relations Museum. Videos of Edward Bernays n.d.), the same tactics used to help promote tobacco have worked well to reverse the growth of smoking. Coupled with leadership from the medical community, antitobacco advocates have used public relations strategies and tactics to help change public attitudes toward smoking, raise awareness about the health risks, and promote the policy regulations required for lasting change (“Achievements in Public Health, 1900–1999: Tobacco Use—United States, 1900–1999” 1999).
In its efforts to shape policy and reduce smoking worldwide, the antitobacco movement has had to compete with the ever creative and resource-rich tobacco industry. One successful approach has been to use former smokers to speak out against the tobacco industry. Today anti-smoking advocates use sleek ads aimed at teen and young adults, with a goal of leveraging the socially minded Millennial generation to try to stop the next generation from smoking.
Public relations campaigns exposing the risks of smoking have led to stronger legislative action restricting tobacco sales, protection against consumers from deceptive marketing practices, and public awareness campaigns that have contributed to the decline of smoking in the United States. But the tobacco industry still finds ways to expand to countries where smoking is tied directly into the national economy. Understanding the strategies of those efforts can help shape future activities to combat the resurgence of smoking.
This chapter analyzes the fight to change public perception, starting with the Surgeon General’s landmark study issued in 1964, that declared smoking a public health risk, to the present (“50th Anniversary: Surgeon General’s Report on Smoking” 2015). It examines tactics led by antismoking groups, particularly the American Legacy Foundation, which runs the innovative youth tobacco prevention campaign truth (Bradley and Nichols 2014). Also explored is the evolution of the antitobacco movement’s messages over the past decades, in order to analyze which of those strategies can be used to advance current antismoking efforts, particularly in light of the rise in electronic cigarettes.
Smoking—A Known Health Risk
In 1964, the U.S. Surgeon General published a landmark study that linked smoking to cancer. The report officially declared smoking a public health issue, and led to a wave of civic action against the industry. While it was the first time that the U.S. government and the medical community established a firm position against smoking, the threat caused by cigarettes had been discussed well before then.
The first attempts to curb tobacco use can be traced back to the early 1600s. In 1604, King James I of England published an antitobacco tract, “A Counterblast to Tobacco” (which modern public relations professionals would call a “white paper”). It illustrated his disdain for the product and particularly for tobacco smoking. Surprisingly, he also made reference to what we now know to be secondhand smoking; however, his critiques of tobacco use were primarily based on moral and hygienic reasoning rather than health concerns. Unfortunately, mass media and social media did not exist in his day, and as a result, his effort did not slow down the consumption of tobacco, which continued to grow in its various uses for cigar smoking, pipe smoking, chewing, and inhaling as snuff (“Reducing Tobacco Use, A Report of the Surgeon General” Chapter 2).
The introduction of mass-produced cigarettes in the 1840s fueled their popularity and as a result, drew a more critical response from the public. The growth in sales coincided with a growing movement throughout America for health reform, and antitobacco sentiment was a common topic in writings at the time.
At the same time, the desire for health consciousness was woven together with religion. The Seventh-Day Adventists used public relations techniques to champion tobacco abstention in the late 1840s and early 1850s, culminating in the publications of articles attacking “the filthy, health-destroying, God-dishonoring practice of using tobacco” (Numbers 2008, p. 86). A large number of individuals and newly formed groups also began to speak out against the rise in tobacco addiction. The American Anti-Tobacco Society was founded in 1849, which today we would call an “advocacy group.” George Trask, founder of the Society, was known as the “Anti-Tobacco Apostle.” He encouraged young people to take his “Band of Hope” pledge: “I hereby solemnly promise to abstain from the use of all Intoxicating Liquors as a beverage; I also promise to abstain from the use of Tobacco in all forms, and all Profane Language” (Jacob Sullum, “For Your Own Good: The Anti-Smoking Crusade,” New York, 1998, p. 26).
Meanwhile in England, surgeon Samuel Solly sparked the Great Tobacco Controversy with his article “Clinical Lectures on Paralysis,” published in 1856 in the Lancet medical magazine (Hilton 2000). His piece triggered a heated debate by linking the recent increase in tobacco consumption with cases of general paralysis that appeared to be cited more frequently. This article captured the attention of medical professionals and also helped catapult the topic into the mainstream.
In the United States, efforts toward the end of the 19th century focused on convincing youth—boys and young men—not to take up smoking. For example, the Consolidated Anti-Cigarette League was set up in New York City by the president of the Board of Education. Although he was a smoker himself, he tried to convince 25,000 schoolboys to pledge not to smoke until they turned 21 (Troyer and Markle 1983).
In 1912, Dr. Isaac Adler, an American doctor, was the first to make a strong connection between lung cancer and smoking in his research paper, “Primary Malignant Growth of the Lung and Bronchi,” (Isaac Adler. “Primary Malignant Growth of the Lung and Bronchi”. (1912) New York, Longmans, Green. pp. 3–12). Following this, in 1930, researchers in Dresden, Germany, made perhaps the strongest ever case against tobacco use, publishing the first-ever statistical correlation between cancer and smoking.
The publication of these medical advancements gave credence to the anti-smoking message of campaigners. The conversation now began to shift toward the substantial health risks that had now been proven as well as to various social arguments that had previously been overlooked or ignored. Nonetheless, starting at the turn of the century, smoking rates in the U.S. skyrocketed thanks to continued improvements in mass production and an explosion of mass media cigarette advertising (“Achievements in Public Health, 1900–1999” 1999). Annual per capita consumption grew from 54 in 1900 to 4,345 cigarettes in 1963 (a half pack a day per person). The growth continued until 1964—the year that the Surgeon General’s landmark study linking smoking to health risks was published (“Surveillance for Selected Tobacco-Use Behaviors—United States, 1900–1994” 1994).
Cigarette smoking among women increased in the 1920s with the help of a public relations campaign conducted by one of the early leaders in public relations, Edward Bernays. He linked smoking to the women’s movement, positioning cigarettes as “torches of freedom” and upending the social taboo against women smoking in public (Amos and Haglund 2000).
In 1929, Bernays orchestrated the widely publicized Easter Day marches in various cities across the country, featuring famous debutantes of the day boldly smoking cigarettes. He also shaped advertising messages that played into women’s concerns about their weight. While his work advanced the goals of the women’s movement, his work was primarily fueled by business interests. Removing the taboo against women smoking in public helped open a large market for his client, Lucky Strike (Amos and Haglund 2000). Bernays later tried to undo the damage his work had caused by advising public relations firms to stop working on behalf of the tobacco industry (Bisbort 2008).
Scientific studies linking tobacco use with cancer and associated health risks were published in the United States as early as the 1940s (“Achievements in Public Health, 1900–1999” 1999). However, advertising at the time suggested that the tobacco industry was aware of the connection to health risks as early as the 1920s. Ads featuring doctors alongside patients suggested that the medical community supported smoking. For example, a Lucky Strike ad from the 1920s positioned cigarettes as a slimming device. Yet the 1920 advertisement included disclaimer language. One ad with a shadowy image of an obese woman next to a thin woman says, “We do not say smoking Lucky’s reduces flesh. We do say, when tempted to over-indulge, reach for a Lucky instead.”
Lucky Strike also worked to differentiate itself from its competition by promoting its “toasted” method of curing tobacco, a method, it claimed, that can protect throats against irritation.
By the 1950s, Lucky Strike’s ads had begun to feature dentists and athletes in addition to physicians. Despite the industry’s use of such “role models” to endorse the use of cigarettes, the U.S. medical community was already starting to establish links between smoking and cancer. By 1919, lung cancer was such a rarely diagnosed disease that, at the Washington University’s Barnes Hospital, an entire medical school class was invited to witness the autopsy of a man who had died from the disease. The professor leading the autopsy believed that no one in the class would ever again see another such case (Blum 1896–1981).
Dr. Alton Ochsner was among those students witnessing the lung autopsies. Nearly two decades later, he began to see an uptick of the once rare cancer. The patients all had a common thread: they had taken up smoking during World War I, when the now mass-advertised cigarettes were given out free to soldiers. In the trenches, soldiers didn’t have time to savor a slow-burning cigar, or pack a pipe, so cigarettes became the go-to source for nicotine. They were even packed in the soldiers’ food rations (Warner and Pollack 2014, November 13).
The 1950s—The “War on Tobacco” Begins
In the 1940s, Oschner began to publicize his theory that smoking was responsible for the increase in lung cancer. In 1952, he published an article in the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) connecting science with his theory (Blum 1999). More and more such studies began to be published in the United States and in Britain. The JAMA published one of the most robust studies ever linking smoking to lung cancer; in 1952, Readers Digest published the JAMA findings in an article title “Cancer by the Carton” finally bringing the issue to the attention of the general public (Warner and Pollack 2014, November 13). However, by then, millions of Americans were smoking.
Soon the courts got involved. In 1954 Eva Cooper filed the first civil lawsuit against the tobacco industry. She sued R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Co. for the death of her husband from lung cancer. Cooper lost the case, but she became the first of a long line of litigants to put the industry on trial. Big Tobacco was forced to reveal what had long been hidden about its business practices and products (Curriden 1994). As these court battles ensued, the industry began facing mounting criticism from all sectors of the public.
To help counter the negative claims, tobacco companies started marketing improved filter and new low-tar formulations, promising a “healthier” smoke. Robert Proctor’s 2012 book Golden Holocaust (Markel 2012), drawn on industry documents made public in litigation, shows how these cigarettes were never proven less dangerous, and were merely tactics created to assuage the public’s fear.
The “War on Tobacco” began to gain traction in the late 1950s and led to a decade of strong, forceful action in the battle over public opinion and health. The tobacco industry fought back. In 1953, competitive cigarette companies came together to form the Council for Tobacco Research (later known as the Tobacco Industry Research Committee or TIRC).
TIRC began when Paul Hahn, president of the American Tobacco Company sent a telegram to eight other leading cigarette companies suggesting that they all work together as a single group to counter any government action against smoking (“A Brief History of the Council for Tobacco Research” 1982). This would give the industry a more unified voice, and one that, given its title, would appear to be less commercial. The group was run by and out of the headquarters of the public relations firm Hill & Knowlton (H+K) in New York City.
Through the TIRC the cigarette industry was able to respond to negative publicity and fund prosmoking research. Though bound together publicly, many brands disagreed with the group’s tactics. For example, Kent cigarettes chose to play into the public’s health concerns by positioning its cigarettes as the “healthier choice.” Other companies chose to vociferously deny any health risks and stay out of the debate altogether (Kluger 1997).
Lawyers counseling the industry advised that public acknowledgement of any culpability could open it up to regulation. But the industry felt it had to do something to show that it was aware of the public’s concern. The TIRC rolled out rebuttal after rebuttal of cigarettes’ links to disease. It produced articles for the general press to raise doubt about the medical findings with titles like “Heavy Smoker s with Low Mortality” (Timmins, William M. 1989, Smoking and the Workplace: Issues and Answers for Human Resources Professionals. New York: Praeger). It also used companies’ annual reports and speeches to question tobacco’s health hazards.
At the same time, in the face of mounting public health concerns, the industry’s public relations firm advised its client to act responsibly. The firm proposed a campaign to voluntarily advise smokers to use the product in moderation and put health warnings on cigarette packages. They argued that such warnings would protect the companies from civil claims. But Lawyers feared it would be an admission (Kluger 1997). While the proposal did not gain any traction with the cigarette companies, warning labels were eventually mandated by government, a requirement that health organizations advocated for and secured.
Lawyers and public relations consultants reviewed every piece of public material in an effort to protect cigarette companies from litigation. But, no matter how much the industry spent on such counsel, it faced a relentless barrage of lawsuits, continuing to reveal its marketing and business practices.
The 1960s—The Decade that Put Tobacco on the Defense
While publicly denying the health risks (e.g., claiming there was no “evidence” that smoking posed health risks) and funding studies by “objective,” credible medical institutions (e.g., the group gave a $25,000 three-year gift to Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center), Philip Morris was busy trying to engineer a “healthier” cigarette. In a laboratory memorandum dated November 15, 1961, Philip Morris researchers had confirmed trace amounts of 42 compounds in cigarette smoke identified as carcinogens. One of the researchers, Helmut Wakeham, produced a report titled “Research and Development Program Leading to a Medically Acceptable Cigarette” (Kluger 1997).
At the same time, the antismoking crusaders at the American Cancer Society joined forces with three other health groups—the National Heart Association, the National Tuberculosis Association, and the American Public Health Association—to pressure the newly elected president, John F. Kennedy, to address the growing public health concern. According to Kluger (1997), when their letters elicited no response from the White House, they threatened to go to the newspapers to complain about Kennedy’s “foot-dragging.” In 1961, reeling from the Bay of Pigs incident, President Kennedy could not afford any bad press. Kennedy referred the letters to his Health, Education and Welfare Secretary, who coordinated a meeting with the three organizations and the Surgeon General, Luther Terry. In 1962, President Kennedy was asked at a press conference what he was doing about the growing concern over smoking and health. He responded that he, himself, could not provide a satisfactory answer but that he would task the Surgeon General to work on the problem. Two weeks later, Surgeon General Terry announced there would be a committee formed to review the links between smoking and cancer.
Within two years, in 1964, the Surgeon General’s committee released its findings on national television. Terry announced that the year-long study the committee had undertaken had indeed revealed a link to lung cancer. He declared that smoking was a public health issue, one of the most dangerous risks facing the country. The following day the Surgeon General’s report was the lead story on radio, TV, and newspapers throughout the country.
The report remained one of the top news stories of 1964. The antitobacco advocacy groups finally had a strategic win in their war on smoking. But they picked a battle against a strong adversary. In 1964, the tobacco industry was an $8 billion a year industry responsible for $3 billion in local, state, and federal taxes, as well as 96,000 jobs and $150 million in advertising (“Blowing Smoke: The Lost Legacy of the Surgeon General’s Report” 2014). To counter, the tobacco industry framed it as a business versus a moral issue. Big Tobacco encouraged reporters to interview southern businessmen lamenting the loss of their jobs. The anti-smoking movement responded by encouraging priests to speak out on the “immortality” of telling young children to “act like men” by smoking.
A War of Words
By the 1970s, the cigarette industry moved on to other messaging. It was no longer trying to declare through ads which brands were endorsed by doctors, as it had in the 1950s. Now, in the rebellious 1960s and early 1970s, the industry tapped into the anti-authoritarian, individualistic social undercurrent. Cigarettes were marketed as a symbol of defiance to a pointedly defiant generation.
Smoking ads played on the rebellious and notorious connotations of cigarettes. Cigarette ads from Camel, Virginia Slims, and Newport cigarettes used counterculture archetypes to market smoking. The ads tapped into burgeoning movements in women’s liberation, sexual freedom, and black power. For example, Virginia Slims, the first-ever brand marketed to women, associated the product with the women’s movement, going so far as to use the comic book heroine, Superwoman, in one of its campaigns. The tagline was, “We make Virginia Slims especially for women because they are biologically superior to men.” Similarly, Newport cigarettes aimed its commercials at the black community, featuring the radical chic imagery popularized by the Black Panther movement (Elkayam 2013). By linking the public’s “right to smoke” with other “rights” of the day—such as civil rights for minorities and equal rights for women—the cigarette industry attempted to position tobacco freedom as yet another of the nation’s social movements.
The communication efforts of the antitobacco movement had to adapt to compete with the aspirational tone of the cigarette industry’s ads. While smoking ads were defiantly glamorous, the antitobacco effort worked to bring it back to reality. Tobacco control advocates focused on exposing the destructive effects of tobacco on the inside of a smoker’s body.
The antitobacco campaign also began to push for restrictions that would ban cigarette ads on television. It invested in campaigns that showed celebrities speaking out against the deceptive marketing tactics and the health hazards of cigarettes. The first antismoking ad produced by the American Cancer Society featured children imitating their smoking parents. It was created in 1961 by political ad guru, Tony Schwartz, who a few years later created the famous “Daisy Ad,” credited for helping Lyndon Johnson win the presidency (Fox 2008).
Another ad created by the American Cancer Society in 1967 featured television star, William Talman, best known for his role as Hamilton Burger, the district attorney who perpetually lost to TV’s famous lawyer, Perry Mason (on the “Perry Mason Show”). The ad struck a nerve. It intimately depicted the actor playing with his young children and young wife. In a pensive voice he talked about how cigarettes “would take [him] away” from his small children and wife. Four weeks after airing, the actor died of lung cancer (“Blowing Smoke: The Lost Legacy of the Surgeon General’s Report” 2014).
In 1964, thanks to the antismoking advocates, the Surgeon General required all tobacco companies to put warning labels on all cigarette packs and cartons. A typical label read,
“Caution: Cigarette Smoking is Dangerous to Health. It May Cause Death from Cancer and Other Diseases.” And, quite specifically, “Smoking Causes Lung Cancer, Heart Disease, Emphysema and May Complicate Pregnancy” (Dumas, Bethany K. “An Analysis of the Adequacy of Federally Mandated Cigarette Package Warnings,” New York: Plenum Press Corp., 1990, p. 309–352).
Antismoking materials often featured vulnerable children exposed to harmful secondhand smoke, working to pull the heartstrings of guilt-ridden parents. Restricting tobacco companies from marketing to children directly was always an important part of the antitobacco movement, with hopes to ensure that the next generation would not start smoking. Efforts also focused on educating teens directly about the health risks of smoking—since that was the same demographic tobacco marketers were targeting.
By the 1970s and 1980s, with greater restrictions on cigarette advertising, the tobacco industry fought back with more sophisticated marketing techniques. They sponsored major televised sporting events, their logos appearing on signage for tennis, football golf, soccer, hockey, and basketball. It was impossible to show live-action shots of the field on network television without also showing the cigarette logos. This was an effective way for tobacco companies to promote their brands while staying within the limits of the regulations.
Another blow to Big Tobacco emerged in the 1980s. Research proving the hazards of secondhand smoke posed another challenge to tobacco’s messaging. While pro-smoking talking points from the 1970s and 1980s stoked a rallying cry for “smokers’ freedom,” that right was now infringing on the public’s rights to clean air. (See the debate on CSPAN, between John Banzhaf, executive director of Action on Smoking and Health, and Brennan Moran, the assistant to the president at the Tobacco Institute, arguing the rights of smokers and the rights of nonsmokers.) (www.c-span.org/video/?309-1/rights-smokers)
When the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) enacted the Clean Air Act, smokers could no longer freely impose their will on others (“The health consequences of smoking: 50 years of progress” 2014). The American Lung Association’s antismoking materials leveraging the new Act, encouraged nonsmokers to be more vocal to exercise their legal rights to breathe smoke-free air.
In 1970, other federal agencies, such as the Labor Department and its Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA), started becoming involved in the clean air movement. New research proved that airborne carcinogens could be found in secondhand smoke. Thus, OSHA issued regulations to ban smoking in work places (Kluger 1997).
In a massive international effort, the World Health Organization (WHO) introduced “World No Tobacco Day” in 1988—the first-ever program of its kind. The campaign, celebrated every May 31, encourages smokers to abstain from using tobacco for one full day in hopes of helping them quit.
By the 1990s, the public became more supportive of bans on smoking in other public places, including restaurants (“Social Norms and Attitudes About Smoking 1991–2010” 2011) and in the early 2000s, even public parks. Even in the face of continued resistance from the tobacco industry, it appears that the public education campaigns, policy reform, and litigation have worked: attitudes around smoking have turned the tide. But the war is hardly over.
A Winnable War?
The largest cigarette companies in the United States spent $8.37 billion on marketing and $26 million in lobbying efforts in 2011 and 2012 alone (“Legacy Foundation Blog using Tobacco Atlas Stats” n.d.). Yet the number of people in America who smoke have been trending downward dramatically, especially among young people. From 2011 to 2014, the share of American high school students who smoked traditional cigarettes declined substantially, from 16 to 9 percent (Tavernise 2015).
The Washington, DC-based American Legacy Foundation is the nation’s largest public health foundation devoted to tobacco use, prevention, and cessation. It has introduced several successful public education programs including: Truth, a national youth smoking prevention; EX, designed to improve smokers’ approach to quitting; and several research initiatives, set out to explore the causes of smoking and most effective approaches to quitting. Its creation came about as a result of the Master Settlement Agreement (MSA) reached in 1988 by attorneys general from 46 states, five U.S. territories, as well as the tobacco industry. The organization uses market intelligence, government outreach, and unique public relations programs to curb tobacco usage. It bases its tactics on information found inside tobacco companies’ annual reports, as well as in the troves of documents made public by the tobacco settlement. To encourage the public to access these documents, it established the Legacy Tobacco Documents Library, an online resource, at the University of California, San Francisco.
Legacy employs Ketchum as its public relations agency of record, with messaging and media geared to Millennial and Gen Z audiences (Bradley and Nichols 2014). Born between 1980 and 2001, Millennials account for 31 percent of the U.S. population, outpacing members of Gen X (born 1965–1979) and Boomers (1946–1964). According to Morrison (2003), Millennials:
• Are civic minded and socially aware.
• Feel compelled to make the world a better place.
• Value being good people over career and even marital success.
• Value brands that show the ability to change with consumer feedback.
• Would rather spend on a desirable experience than on coveted gadgets.
And, they rely on social media to consume information and vet brands:
• 60 percent of Millennials said social media was the foremost way they are influenced by brands. Only 31 percent claimed print media was (Horowitz 2014).
The current Truth campaign ads run on MTV, VH1, and Bravo, all of which have relatively high ratings of the target. Since Millennials are known to be wary of overt marketing tactics, the ads tap into their savvy and cynicism. One of the ads calls out certain celebrities who inadvertently make cigarettes appealing to young people, with a plea to the generation to “end smoking now.”
The ads are also designed to appeal visually to Millennials, incorporating aesthetic trends used to promote music and technology. Truth is also seen on laptop, mobile phone, and TV screens with electronic music, streaming texts and an ethos that some characterize as similar to “Occupy Wall Street.” The ads frame smoking as a curable epidemic that Millennials can defeat—a message likely to resonate with a civic minded, socially active generation.
But not everyone in the demographic is able to be convinced. In an April 15, 2015, interview with the author, Robin Koval noted that “People with the most education and access to cessation tools are the people who have stopped smoking. Smoking has become a behavior that is more concentrated in lower socioeconomic groups.”
The challenge, says Robin Koval, Legacy CEO, is knowing how to reach this new generation. “The way we can message to people has changed a lot,” said Koval. “We don’t have to exclusively use mass approaches anymore. Through digital tools, we have the ability to tailor messages and reach folks that we never have before.” An example is Legacy’s work with the Lesbian Gay Bisexual Transgender (LGBT) community, a demographic long targeted by the tobacco industry. The Foundation has used publicity to show this group how Big Tobacco profits from them and also provides the community resources to help them quit.
“Media has changed so much,” said Koval. “We think there’s an opportunity to use the power of this generation, their social influence and peer-to-peer influencing.” And Koval thinks these efforts are also sending a message to Big Tobacco.
The facts are, if you look at what public health and tobacco control efforts can do—decrease prevalence dramatically, and what we have done that with public education programs, clean air laws and [increased] pricing—it’s a winnable battle,” she said. “The tobacco industry knows that well. If you look at where they are focusing their efforts—it’s not hard to see the United States isn’t a growth market—they’re focused on outside the United States where tobacco control isn’t as advanced as it is here.
And that’s where Big Tobacco is headed next.
The Battleground Moves Overseas
Smoking rates in the United States have declined steadily since the 1960s. Internationally, there are countries doing more to fight big tobacco than ever. But there is a long way to go.
The tobacco industry is ramping up its use of international trade agreements to slow health education gains made by countries around the world. Since 2010, Uruguay has been fighting a legal challenge by Philip Morris International against the country’s graphic health warnings on tobacco products. The challenge is being funded in part by Bloomberg Philanthropies and international tobacco control advocates. Australia is currently fending off both a World Trade Organization (WTO) challenge and a legal challenge by Philip Morris International against the country’s law requiring cigarette packs to be sold in drab colors with very graphic health warnings. It is Australia’s tobacco control policy, referred to as “plain packaging.” Numerous other countries have also been threatened by the tobacco industry. It is a tactic that can lead to delays by governments in passing and implementing the Framework Convention on Tobacco Control (FCTC)—the world’s first-ever health treaty. It has been adopted by more than 180 countries globally (“Bloomberg Philanthropies & The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation Launch Anti-Tobacco Trade Litigation Fund” 2015).
Conclusion
In the ongoing fight against tobacco, public relations will continue to play a vital role to ensure the tobacco industry is transparent with the public about its manufacturing and marketing practices. The need to change attitudes toward smoking around the world, safeguard the gains made domestically, and protect health will not cease until the war on tobacco is won.
By studying both the tobacco industry’s marketing tactics and the strategies that have been used to counter those messages, future public relations may be able to do even more to prevent and curb the harmful effects of cigarettes. Just as the industry has continued to innovate with products like electronic cigarettes, and has expanded into new markets overseas, the public relations strategies used to keep the tobacco industry in check must also evolve. From crafting messages that resonate with new generations, to using new digital platforms to reach them, the public may well one day to win “The War on Tobacco.”
Takeaway
Edward Bernays, the public relations pioneer responsible for the 1929 “Torches of Freedom” campaign, was the first in a long line of communicators and marketers to advise cigarette companies how to persuade more women to smoke. But in 1964, after the release of findings proving connections between tobacco and cancer, the Surgeon General called Bernays directly, asking for help to undo the damage caused by 45 years of cigarette promotion.
Bernays turned directly to public relations firms with pleas to sever their ties with tobacco companies. He tried to play on their guilt and shame, admitting his own. Many of the firms, however, countered that everyone had the right to be represented. The cigarette companies were, after all, some of their largest clients.
Bernays would later lament that it was far easier to promote smoking than it was to stop it. Sadly, his own wife, Doris’ smoking habit contributed to her fatal stroke in 1980.
As shown in this chapter, the Legacy Foundation’s War and Tobacco has succeeded in large part because of its creation of specific messaging for specific audiences. Thanks to social media, it can zero in on certain demographics, such as the various segments within the LBGT market, with emotional appeals backed by statistics.
The growing success of the antitobacco movement proves the value of deploying customized campaigns to effect behavioral change in specific audiences. Mass media appeals are no match for highly targeted campaigns, especially when it comes to the highly cynical audience of Millennials. Finally, the cigarette marketers are losing the battle.
Against seemingly impossible odds, outspent and outgunned by Big Tobacco, the movement has fueled enormous social change in America. Now the battlefield has moved to emerging markets. Again the competition from the tobacco companies will be daunting, and the communications challenges even greater. It will take continued commitment and resources to continue the fight and hopefully to continue the success.