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Excerpts from: Antismoke groups hit tobacco firms' antismoke efforts

By Patricia Wen, Boston Globe [09/16/02]

After US tobacco companies vowed in 1998 never to peddle cigarettes to teenagers, they approached young people with an opposing - seemingly altruistic - message. Philip Morris Cos. spent millions on its ''Think. Don't Smoke'' television ads, while a smaller rival, Lorillard Tobacco Co., recently has been running a ''Tobacco is Whacko if You're a Teen'' campaign.

But now, under pressure from antismoking groups, the companies are cutting back and Phillip Morris announced last week that it's pulling its ads, which aired for the last time in March. After complaints from antismoking advocates, Lorillard's prevention program for youths was dropped last month as a sponsor for a National Basketball Association youth tournament.

Advocates say the cigarette makers - instead of turning youngsters off from smoking - have used their slick antismoking ads to subliminally encourage more teens to pick up the deadly habit. At the very least, they say, the tobacco company's campaigns are designed to add respectability to their corporate names, which will make children more open to their products in the future.

''We never asked them to get involved in making teen prevention ads,'' said Cheryl Healton, president of the American Legacy Foundation, a national group that creates antismoking campaigns. ''It's like asking the fox to watch the chicken coop.''

Tobacco company officials are fuming at what they see as the maligning of their good intentions. While the 1998 landmark settlement agreement between tobacco companies and 46 states prohibited companies from marketing, openly or subtly (think Joe Camel), to teens, it never said anything about prevention programs.

Howard Willard, senior vice president of youth smoking prevention at Philip Morris, which makes the Marlboro brand that is popular among teens, said the company sees it as its responsibility to speak out against youth smoking. He said it will continue to do so even while dropping its ''Think. Don't Smoke'' campaign and cutting its annual youth prevention budget from $100 million to $50 million. The new emphasis, he said, will be on parents as the messengers of the don't-smoke campaign.

''If you look at the research, parents have the most impact on whether kids smoke,'' he said.

Steve Watson, Lorillard's spokesman, said their prevention ads for teens are based on research about their effectiveness with teens. He said the company used an array of teenage personality types, such as an adolescent who gets his tongue pierced during the ad, to express the view that smoking among teens is a bad thing.

''The fact is, our ads are effective,'' said Watson, whose company makes the Newport brand that is popular among African-American and Hispanic youths.

Antismoking advocates say the ads are too effective - at the wrong thing. Instead of turning kids off from cigarettes, they make smoking seem like a ''grown-up'' activity, adding to the forbidden fruit appeal of the product, as well as glossing over the health hazards. They also said that Philip Morris' ads, in particular, tend to feature wholesome teens, the kind of young person who is not likely to light up anyway.

Advocates' research shows companies' prevention ads do not use the most cutting-edge techniques to capture teens' attention - such as exposing the health horrors from cigarette smoking or depicting smoking as hurting a teen's social status, either by making them ugly or isolated.

''It's a conflict of interest for them to use the best advertising techniques out there,'' said Lois Biener, a researcher at the Center for Survey Research at the University of Massachusetts at Boston. Biener specializes in prevention ads for teens. ''If they did, they'd have to say that cigarette smoking is bad for kids - and adults.''

Biener said the tobacco company ads don't work, either. In a 1999 study, teens recognized antismoking ads made by Massachusetts antismoking groups and the American Legacy Foundation more readily than those made by Philip Morris. She said the most effective ads showed graphic footage of health consequences, such as the one featuring a young Massachusetts woman named Pam Laffin, who experimented with smoking at age 10 and died of emphysema two years ago at age 31.

The Philip Morris prevention ads for teens actually decreased antitobacco attitudes among children ages 12 to 17, thereby increasing their chances of smoking, according to a study published in the American Journal of Public Health in June.

While a number of public health officials agreed that the tobacco ads didn't work with teens, they also differed about what is the single best strategy to aim at the teen mindset. Cornelia Pechmann, a marketing professor at the University of California in Irvine, said she believes highlighting health consequences has less impact on teens, who tend to think they are immortal, than showing social ostracism. For instance, her tests of the American Legacy Foundation's controversial ads - which depicted teens throwing body bags at the headquarters of Philip Morris - showed that teens were horrified by them, but seeing them didn't change their likelihood of smoking. ''I wanted them to work, but they didn't work among teens,'' she said.

But Healton of the American Legacy Foundation said her studies have found that such ads were effective, with a kind of rebellious swagger that appealed to teenagers, and made them less likely to smoke. ''We have to break through with teens, we have to be edgy,'' Healton said.

Several of American Legacy's antismoking spots have infuriated cigarette makers - perhaps largely because they pay for them. The 1998 settlement called for tobacco companies to fund a foundation - later established as the American Legacy Foundation - to create antismoking ads as long as they didn't ''vilify'' tobacco companies.

Antismoking groups say they are just using the best strategies they know to stop young people from smoking, ones that speak to health consequences or teen vanity. They said tobacco companies should stop trying to pretend they are part of the crusade against youth smoking.

Joel Spivak, spokesman for the Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids in Washington, D.C., said, ''They should just stay away from kids.''