Targeting youth and concerned smokers: evidence from Canadian tobacco industry documents

OBJECTIVE: To provide an understanding of the targeting strategies of cigarette marketing, and the functions and importance of the advertising images chosen. METHODS: Analysis of historical corporate documents produced by affiliates of British American Tobacco (BAT) and RJ Reynolds (RJR) in Canadian litigation challenging tobacco advertising regulation, the Tobacco Products Control Act (1987): Imperial Tobacco Limitee & RJR-Macdonald Inc c. Le Procurer General du Canada. RESULTS: Careful and extensive research has been employed in all stages of the process of conceiving, developing, refining, and deploying cigarette advertising. Two segments commanding much management attention are "starters" and "concerned smokers". To recruit starters, brand images communicate independence, freedom and (sometimes) peer acceptance. These advertising images portray smokers as attractive and autonomous, accepted and admired, athletic and at home in nature. For "lighter" brands reassuring health concerned smokers, lest they quit, advertisements provide imagery conveying a sense of well being, harmony with nature, and a consumer's self image as intelligent. CONCLUSIONS: The industry's steadfast assertions that its advertising influences only brand loyalty and switching in both its intent and effect is directly contradicted by their internal documents and proven false. So too is the justification of cigarette advertising as a medium creating better informed consumers, since visual imagery, not information, is the means of advertising influence.     

Tobacco point-of-purchase promotion: examining tobacco industry documents

In the face of increasing media restrictions around the world, point-of-purchase promotion (also called point-of-sale merchandising, and frequently abbreviated as POP or POS) is now one of the most important tools that tobacco companies have for promoting tobacco products. Using tobacco industry documents, this paper demonstrates that tobacco companies have used point-of-purchase promotion in response to real or anticipated advertising restrictions. Their goal was to secure dominance in the retail setting, and this was achieved through well-trained sales representatives who offered contracts for promotional incentive programmes to retailers, which included the use of point-of-sale displays and merchandising fixtures. Audit programmes played an important role in ensuring contract enforcement and compliance with a variety of tobacco company incentive programmes. Tobacco companies celebrated their merchandising successes, in recognition of the stiff competition that existed among tobacco companies for valuable retail display space.     

Brand differences of free-base nicotine delivery in cigarette smoke: the view of the tobacco industry documents

The recent availability of internal tobacco industry documents provides significant insight into industry knowledge and manipulation of tobacco smoke delivery. One critical area of research is the role of smoke chemistry in determining the absorption and effects of smoke constituents, especially harm producing or pharmacologically active compounds. Independent scientific research has suggested that the nicotine dosing characteristics, hence the addiction potential of cigarettes, may be determined in part by the amount of free‐base nicotine in cigarette smoke and its effects on the location, route, and speed of absorption in the body and on the sensory perception effects of the inhaled smoke. Tobacco industry documents describe the use of a number of methods internally for measuring free‐base nicotine delivery. These include the common use of cigarette “smoke pH” as a means to estimate the fraction of free‐base nicotine in the particulate matter (PM) in cigarette smoke, as well as efforts to measure free‐base nicotine directly. Although these methods do not provide accurate absolute measures of free‐base nicotine in smoke, consistencies observed in the findings across the various manufacturers indicate: (1) real relative differences in the acid/base chemistry of the smoke from different brands of cigarettes; (2) a connection between differences in free‐base levels and brand‐dependent differences in sensory perception and smoke “impact”; and (3) levels of free‐base nicotine that are greater than have typically been publicly discussed by the industry. Furthermore, the results of these methods are generally consistent with those of a recent study from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention which directly measured the free‐base fraction of nicotine across a range of cigarette types. Consideration of the likely fundamental importance of free‐base nicotine levels in cigarette smoke, together with the efforts discussed in the tobacco industry documents to measure such levels, indicates that the public health community would benefit from additional research to assess directly the delivery of free‐base nicotine in cigarette smoke across brands. This may be especially useful for those products (“light”, “ultralight”, “reduced carcinogen”, etc) that have been promoted, either explicitly or implicitly, as “harm reducing”.     

Push or be punished: tobacco industry documents reveal aggression against businesses that discourage tobacco use

OBJECTIVE: To learn how the tobacco industry reacted to businesses' voluntarily enacting policies to discourage tobacco use and minimise exposure of employees and patrons to secondhand smoke. DATA SOURCES: Internal tobacco industry documents discovered among those posted on the internet. Approximately 24 million documents have been posted as of this writing. Information in this article was culled from among these documents, which have been made public as a unique requirement of the state of Minnesota's settlement with the industry. STUDY SELECTION: Those documents were used that offered insight into, and which gave a perspective on, the industry's attitudes and reactions toward other businesses as they adopted tobacco-free policies. CONCLUSIONS: In the wake of widespread acceptance that tobacco use causes illness and death, many individual businesses (and even entire industries) took positive steps to eliminate employees', customers', and facilities' exposure to tobacco smoke. Steps were also taken to discourage tobacco use among employees. Internal tobacco industry documents show that the industry reacted with aggression, and in some cases with retribution, against businesses that voluntarily adopted policies to discourage tobacco use. The intent of these actions appears to be to reverse these policies, with a broader goal of neutralising large scale public and private trends that reflect the decreasing social acceptability of tobacco use.     

Pig's blood in cigarette filters: how a single news release highlighted tobacco industry concealment of cigarette ingredients

The tobacco industry is not obligated to disclose ingredients and additives used in manufactured tobacco production. This paper describes global reaction to a press release highlighting evidence that porcine haemoglobin ("pig's blood") was sometimes used in cigarette manufacturing while never being disclosed to smokers. The case study illustrates the power of press releases to ignite major interest in tobacco control issues.     

促进烟叶和卷烟生产协调发展

近几年来,我国卷烟生产已经和正在发生深刻变化,对烟叶生产提出了许多新的要求.烟叶生产取得了积极成效,但也面临不少新课题和新矛盾.面对新的形势,行业宏观管理部门、卷烟工业企业、烟叶产区和打叶复烤企业需要共同努力,统筹兼顾,促进烟叶和卷烟生产协调发展.     

The impact of anti-tobacco industry prevention messages in tobacco producing regions: evidence from the US truth campaign

Background: Adolescents who live in tobacco producing regions may not respond favourably to anti-industry ads. Objective: To examine whether state level involvement in tobacco production appears to limit the effectiveness of anti-industry ads to prevent tobacco use among adolescents in the USA. Design: Time trend analyses were done using repeated cross sectional data from six waves of the Legacy Media Tracking Survey, which were collected between 1999 and 2003. Setting and participants: 28 307 adolescents, ages 12–17 years, were classified as living in: tobacco producing states (TPS) (n = 1929); non-tobacco producing states (non-TPS) with low tobacco control funding comparable to TPS (n = 5323); non-TPS with relatively high funding (n = 15 076); and non-TPS with established anti-industry ad campaigns (n = 5979). Main outcome measures: Reactions to anti-industry ads; strength of anti-industry attitudes/beliefs; changes in anti-industry attitudes/beliefs over time. Results: Ad reactions did not differ by state type. Multivariate adjusted time trend analyses indicated significant, comparable increases in anti-industry attitudes/beliefs since the onset of the truth® campaign, in both TPS and non-TPS. Mediation analyses indicated that these increases were due, in part, to campaign exposure. Conclusions: Adolescents who live in tobacco producing regions appear to be as responsive to anti-industry ads as their counterparts in non-tobacco producing regions. This study provides further evidence for the effectiveness of such ads.     

烟草行业工商协同营销模式研究与探讨

根据我国烟草行业工商分设的现状和工商双方在营销功能上的基本分工,从"卷烟营销价值链上的工商定位"、"卷烟营销市场化进程中的工商定位"、"两个角度工商定位的关系"3个方面阐述了工商企业"准确定位"的基本框架,并在基本框架下,从战略对接和战术对接两个层面描述了工商双方有机对接的重要节点和相关思考,以期为工商协同营销的进一步深化提供理论参考。     

影响卷烟端部落丝量的因素研究

通过卷制结构不同的烟丝、测试通过卷接设备的烟丝结构、调整设备参数及喂丝方式等实验，发现烟丝的结构和耐加工性能是影响卷烟端部落丝量的主要因素，卷接设备的参数调整、喂丝方式是影响卷烟端部落丝量的次要因素。