Tobacco Marketing: Where There’s Smoke, is There Fire?

Class action and government lawsuits against the tobacco industry in Canada and the U.S. have been great business for the legal profession. They are also proving to be a boon for students of marketing.

Litigation has pried open a treasure chest of internal documents that show how tobacco companies have identified target markets, in particular “starters” and “pre-quitters.”

“There are quite fascinating revelations and there’s a lot you can draw from information that would normally be proprietary,” said Timothy Dewhirst, Associate Professor in the Department of Marketing and Consumer Studies at University of Guelph. Dewhirst spoke at the Conference on Moral and Ethical Issues in Consumer Decision Making, held at Queen’s School of Business in May 2012.

The tobacco industry is under legal siege in Canada. All provinces are suing or have said they intend to sue tobacco companies to recover health care costs. Quebec is seeking $60 billion in costs and Ontario $50 billion. Individual smokers have brought a $27 billion class action suit against tobacco companies, the largest in Canadian history.

A cigarette for all seasons

Dewhirst has spent years reviewing tobacco industry documents filed in court cases, accessed via the website Legacy Tobacco Documents Library. He said the documents reveal an industry searching creatively for new markets. Some brands and extensions were geared to women: in the 1990s, Virginia SuperSlims was dubbed “the first low smoke cigarette for women.” Some were based on geography, such as Camel Beach Breezer or Bayou Blast. Some were geared to special occasions, such as Halloween, usually featuring women dressed suggestively. And some were designed to exploit the fact that a good deal of cigarette smoking coincides with alcohol consumption; Camel’s Margarita Mixer is a case in point.

So what? a marketer would say. This is typical marketing segmentation done by just about any company large or small. Dewhirst said the difference is that many consumers of cigarettes are either vulnerable — classified as “those who may not fully understand the implications of marketing messages” — or at-risk — defined as those who “have the cognitive abilities and defense mechanisms to qualify as sophisticated but have other disadvantages.”

In their defence, tobacco companies have said that they are only trying to appeal to adult consumers and that marketing communications are aimed strictly at improving market share. Dewhirst said internal company documents suggest otherwise. Over the years, he said, two market segments have been of great interest: “starters” and “pre-quitters.”

Two key markets

“Starters” refers to the youth market. In 1988, an Imperial Tobacco memo pointed out: “If the last 10 years have taught us anything, it is that the industry is dominated by the companies who respond most effectively to the needs of younger smokers. Our efforts on these brands will remain on maintaining their relevance to smokers in these younger groups in spite of the share performance they may develop among older smokers.”

This memo, Dewhirst said, “is quite a revealing document because they considered youth so important that they were willing to risk alienating their more established customers.”

The reason for the tobacco industry’s interest in the youth market is because smokers tend to be initiated at age 13 or 14, and, historically, the first brand selection is crucial for brand loyalty.

“If you start smoking Player’s, 25 years later it’s highly likely you’re still smoking that brand,” said Dewhirst. “Most switching occurs within the brand family.”

Bold and graphic warnings on cigarette packaging have successfully communicated the health effects of smoking, Dewhirst said, but they are not necessarily changing behaviour among youth. “Consumer research by tobacco companies show that most children acknowledge that smoking is bad for them,” he said. “They key issue is that they underestimate the role of addiction. So if you think initiation taking place at age 13 or 14 and you question them whether they think they’ll be smoking in 25 years, many of them will say no.”

The other other key segment that tobacco companies focus on are pre-quitters who need reassurance to ignore health concerns and continue smoking. Dewhirst said brands have typically employed descriptors such as “light” and “mild”, though such terms are no longer allowed to be used.

“The reason why light and mild were deemed deceptive,” said Dewhirst, “is because smokers are addicted and need an intake of nicotine. So subconsciously, to maintain nicotine they might start smoking more cigarettes advertised as light or more of the cigarette or take deeper breaths.” 

Dewhirst said internal documents from Canadian tobacco companies were released as a result of two large trials in 1989 and 2002, so there is a large body of material from the 1970s through the late 1990s. “There is a gap in the last decade in Canada,” said Dewhirst, “but that will probably soon change as a result of class action suits.”

— Alan Morantz