Smoking Guns: Laura Deeb got hooked on a TV spot and a train ride.
Tobacco companies will contribute as much as $1.4 billion annually to raise a generation of non-smokers. Between the parties and the PSAs, teens are getting – and giving – a new message.
The high school sophomore joined Florida’s S.W.A.T. (Students Working Against Tobacco) team after seeing an ad from The Truth, an edgy $39 million campaign from the state’s Department of Health. Deeb then hitched a ride on The Truth Train, whose 1998 tour spread the message that tobacco marketing manipulates teens.
“They took a different method, talking about manipulation instead of health issues,” Deeb says. “I was intrigued. I thought, `I could do that.'”
She has. For two years, Deeb has devoted her free time to anti-tobacco advocacy. Now an intern in the state’s Office of Tobacco Control, she is one of 15,000 S.W.A.T. members and on the cusp of a new trend in marketing: Youth-driven, anti-tobacco campaigns.
In January, 46 states started getting initial payments from the $206 billion that tobacco companies will provide over the next 25 years as part of the landmark 1998 Master Settlement Agreement. Florida, Minnesota, Washington, and Mississippi have begun funding ads, events, Web sites, and collateral, and have received unprecedented input from teens. California, Arizona, and Massachusetts now have exponentially more funding for their long-running health programs.
Add national campaigns like the American Legacy Foundation’s $150 million to $255 million Truth campaign and the smaller Tobacco-Free Kids effort from the U.S. Department of Health & Human Services, and it starts looking like the next national epidemic. By the time all states gear up, anti-tobacco marketing could hit $1.43 billion each year.
Here’s the math: If each state in the Master Settlement Agreement budgets a conservative $20 million (Florida’s fiscal 2001 budget is $39 million, and Washington’s is $26 million), that’s $920 million. Impressive, but still a fraction of the $1.6 billion to $4 billion that the Centers for Disease Control suggest states spend each year on tobacco control.
Throw in American Legacy’s campaign and matching grants ($35 million over three years), plus the tobacco companies’ own youth prevention programs, estimated at $350 million. Grand total: $1.43 billion.
By comparison, tobacco companies spend about $5.6 billion a year on brand marketing (See “Private Parties,” pg. 62).
Much of the settlement money funds TV and print ads, but at least half goes to promotional events, from all-expenses-paid teen summits and event marketing tours to branded premiums, loyalty cards, and Web sites. Promotion is playing a heavy role as states focus on grassroots strategies and let their marketing messages emerge from the kids.
“I’m a child of the `60s. I was an activist in high school,” says one state official who asked not to be named. “The energy against the Vietnam War came from young people, even though adults were involved. There is much the same potential with this issue.”
Picture a `60s-style protest with a multi-billion-dollar budget and the marketing smarts of the 21st century. Add 75,000 teens, and you get a marketing trend fraught with irony: Kids who feel they’ve been manipulated by tobacco marketing turn the tables by creating their own campaigns – same strategies, different message. As politics meets extra-curricular activities meets marketing internship, teens are honing their future resumes by creating some impressive anti-marketing marketing – all while bashing the companies that fund their efforts. It’s Marketing 101 on a tobacco company scholarship.
A New Drug
The anti-tobacco campaigns are an unprecedented blend of government process and grassroots events. Marketing is one part of multi-pronged state programs that include education, cessation, enforcement against selling to minors, and partnerships with health organizations.
“Everybody knows The Truth ads and gear, but it’s all components working together” that has brought Florida’s smoking rates down 54 percent among middle school kids and 24 percent among high schoolers, says Debbie Bodenstine, director of Florida’s Division of Health Awareness and Tobacco. “Plus, it’s youth-led. They’re instrumental in setting strategy.”
When The Truth broke in February 1998, “the brand needed to feel like the way kids felt,” says Jeff Hicks, president of Crispin, Porter & Bodusky, the Miami-based lead agency for Florida. “What kids crave is rebellion, not tobacco. But you can’t take that cigarette – that symbol – away without giving them something equally rebellious: fighting tobacco companies.”
Kids voted for the Truth tagline and S.W.A.T. acronym at the state’s first teen summit in 1998. Last year, 1,000 summit-goers put finishing touches on Real Truth, a bid to filmmakers to stop glamorizing smoking in movies. This year, summit organizers hope the 12- to 17-year-old attendees can help set a brand identity and template for college campus programs. The state piloted campaigns with six universities this year, and hopes to offer a Truth-like brand to colleges statewide this fall.
All summit-goers attend a marketing session to brainstorm ideas and evaluate past efforts. Crispin Porter and p.r. shop Porter Novelli, Washington, DC, turn kids’ suggestions into polished campaigns. Casting calls go out via S.W.A.T. county coordinators. Ads air statewide and appear on TheTruth.com, a fervently hip site.
“This isn’t like a poster contest,” Hicks says. “We think of the kids as our clients. They give us direction and feedback, and they let us create. They don’t draw up the ads.” Hicks sees summits as “a giant research experience,” with hundreds of kids acting as a sounding board for the agency’s ideas. A 20-teen advisory board reviews all marketing elements, from ads to T-shirts and watches bearing The Truth logo.
“No one had ever branded a social marketing cause before,” Hicks says. “Brands matter much more to this age group because they’re clamoring for ways to express themselves. We needed a brand kids could subscribe to. We wanted to do [tobacco control] the way MTV, Sprite, or even Marlboro would do it.”
“When our youth found out that they were doing exactly what the tobacco companies wanted [by smoking], they were furious. Their message is, `Don’t be manipulated.'”
“I never thought about marketing as manipulation until S.W.A.T. The program has definitely raised my awareness,” says Deeb, the sophomore. “All marketing is manipulative – they’re always trying to get you to buy their products. But there’s a decency level about what’s being marketed, to whom, and how.”
Good Manipulation
That begs the question: Are anti-tobacco campaigns manipulating kids, too? Are teens just trading tobacco’s glam message for another, hipper “brand”?
“It’s one thing to manipulate people to eat a different brand of cheese, [it’s another] to sell a product that kills one in three people who use it,” Hicks says. “The Truth is not manipulative because it makes no specific call to action. It just give the facts, like testimony and internal memos from tobacco execs.”
But The Truth tour events give out branded premiums to kids who fill out data cards – an exchange that promo considers a “call to action,” even if the action is joining a database rather than joining a cause. In fact, most kids join up because they like what they see on TV or in the streets. Tactics like S.W.A.T. cards – good for discounts at nine statewide businesses including Dunkin’ Donuts, Perfumania, and Jumbo Sports – are classic promotional calls to action. Mississippi’s Web site, QuestionIt.com, gives coupons for discounts on “guaranteed nicotine free” CDs and “cancer-free” pizza.
Counter-manipulation is a valid concern, says Mary Sheehan, director of Minnesota’s Tobacco Endowment Program. “That’s why we’ve got to get kids to the level of [seeing] the [tobacco company] documents, then let them respond in their own words.”
In its settlement, Minnesota negotiated to house the repository of tobacco company documents unearthed by the trial. The state’s Department of Health is culling millions of documents for statements on strategies to target youth. “You put that stuff in front of kids, and it really makes them angry,” Sheehan says. “We learned at the summit that kids want to be the ones who respond to it.”
Minnesota’s approach is more marketing verite than Florida’s polished campaign.
“We’ve tried to marry counter-marketing with youth leadership,” Sheehan explains. “As kids spread their activism wings, the ads and marketing document their efforts.”
A video booth at Minnesota’s April summit filmed 16 hours of unscripted testimony from some of the 400 attendees, including a young woman crying over her dad’s death from lung cancer and a young man “thanking” cigarette makers for slowly killing his brother. Ad agency Campbell Mithun Esty, Minneapolis, used the footage for TV spots.
High school senior Katie Tilley has been involved with advocacy groups for about four years. She’s one of two teens on Minnesota’s Tobacco Endowment Advisory Group, which sent her to Florida to study tactics there. “It’s exciting to see [the movement] finally take shape,” says Tilley, who’s thinking of a career in politics, international relations, or p.r. “Kids grow up seeing cigarette ads everywhere. It blows me away how effective [tobacco] marketing is.”
At the summit video booth, Tilley stuck cigarettes in her nose and ears and addressed tobacco execs: “Thank you for giving us this money and letting us have all this fun while we do this program.”
Guerilla Activists
The American Legacy Foundation’s national Whole Truth campaign mimics part of Florida’s campaign. (It works with Crispin Porter and Porter Novelli, too; lead agency is Arnold Communications, Boston, which also handles the Massachusetts campaign.) The foundation’s Truth Tour runs from June 26 through August. Thirteen tricked-up vans with 30 teens visit kid-friendly sites such as beaches, concerts, and malls.
The Washington, DC-based foundation expected 1,000 teens for its June summit, held in Seattle. Kids registered online (TheTruth.com) and via “Truth Trainers,” teens who toured Spring Break hot spots including Panama City and Myrtle Beach to spread the word and build the foundation’s database. The foundation auditions spokes-teens with the help of a casting director from MTV’s Real World/Road Rules.
In February, the foundation offered a three-year, $35 million matching grant program for states to spur grassroots youth involvement complementing The Truth campaign. The 46 states in the Master Settlement Agreement can get $500,000 to $1 million if they’ve conducted the foundation’s Youth Tobacco Survey on attitude, use, and exposure to marketing. Grants are awarded on July 31.
Last fall, the 20-month-old foundation brought its “Core 100” panel (two teens from every state) to meet with its marketing team. The Core 100 set the summit agenda and will run summit sessions.
Tobacco’s Own Message
Meanwhile, tobacco companies continue their own youth prevention programs. The Master Settlement Agreement required companies to put a senior vp in charge of Youth Smoking Prevention activities (without specifying funding). Philip Morris is spending $100 million this year, mostly on ads but also on school programs, partnerships with community groups including National 4-H Council, and access-restriction campaigns (including ads reminding parents to watch their own cigarettes). Ads target kids 10 to 14 with the tagline, “Think. Don’t Smoke.” Ads aimed at parents tell them to talk with kids about smoking. Young & Rubicam, New York City, handles; Bravo Group, New York City, handles Spanish-language ads. Philip Morris is working on concepts targeting ads to African- and Asian-Americans.
In schools, Philip Morris and Brown & Willimason fund Life Skills Training, a Cornell University-created program to help kids avoid drugs, alcohol, and violence. Tours began with the 1999-2000 school year, and will reach 250,000 sixth-through-eighth graders by 2003 with $12 million in total funding. “Some schools come under criticism for getting our money,” says PM spokesman Tom Ryan. “We try to be very low-profile.”
Under senior vp Carolyn Levy, Philip Morris’s Youth Smoking Prevention activities try to “enhance protective factors [like] parent connectedness, alternatives like sports and art, and positive relationships – and reduce risk factors [such as] low self-esteem, peer pressure, and access to products,” Ryan says.
Last year, the National 4-H Council was criticized by several local chapters for accepting a two-year, $4.3 million grant from Philip Morris for a national tobacco prevention program called “Free for Life: Youth Empowered to be Tobacco-Free” (October promo).
Brown & Williamson funds third-party youth prevention instead of direct advertising. The company supports the Jaycees Against Youth Smoking (JAYS) school-seminar program and singer Fishbone Fred, whose safety songs play well to school crowds. “We don’t think parents would be comfortable with us talking to their kids about tobacco products,” says spokesperson Steven Kottak. “We partner with organizations that work with kids, and they control the messages. We’re a source of funding, not a sponsor.”
Critics say some of these anti-smoking activities are disingenuous, such as using professional actors in ads. As states’ own campaigns flourish, they’ll need to make sure they don’t become slicker than the campaigns they were created to oppose. The teens they want to motivate will likely provide their own barometer.
Two studies released in May criticized tobacco marketers for advertising in magazines with high teen readership, prompting Philip Morris to pull out of 40 publications and President Clinton to urge Congress to pass the National Youth Smoking Reduction Act (the Frist-McCain Bill), which would give the Food & Drug Administration authority to regulate tobacco marketing.
The U.S. Supreme Court ruled in March that the FDA has no authority to regulate tobacco. That halted the association’s seven-month-old, $5 million marketing campaign to keep retailers from selling cigarettes to kids, and fueled debate over the FDA’s role.
The first study, conducted by the American Legacy Foundation, found that three brands popular with teens reach more kids 12 to 17 via print ads than they did before the 1998 Master Settlement Agreement.
The second study, conducted by the Massachusetts Department of Public Health, found tobacco ad spending rose $30 million in magazines with 15 percent or more teen readership and $24.4 million in magazines with five to 15 percent teen readership since the Master Settlement Agreement. Money funneled from outdoor advertising ($8.1 million in 1999, down from $118.6 million in 1998) funded an overall 40-percent boost in print spending to $315 million.
In response, Marlboro maker Philip Morris dropped about 40 magazines with 15 percent or two million-plus readers under 18 from its schedule. The company also proposed to the National Association of Attorneys General that a standard for tobacco advertising be set by an independent third party.
PM, which requires publications to submit subscriber or circulation data and sample issues, last year pulled ads from Spin and Vibe. “We felt the overall look and feel of the magazines were too youth-oriented,” even though circulation data met requirements, says vp-communications Michael Pfeil. In April, PM began replacing back-cover ads with youth prevention ads aimed at adults.
The FDA has been cracking down on retail sales to minors since February 1997. Last August, it broke ads in five states and 11 other cities to discourage retailers from selling tobacco to kids. An accompanying Retailer Rewards Program in the five states gave sports, concert, and event tickets to retailers who refused to sell to minors. Radio stations donated tickets; FDA handled compliance checks and rewarded retailers. FDA halted compliance checks in March after the Supreme Court ruling.
At press time, the Frist-McCain Bill was before the Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions.
The crowd at Minneapolis nightclub The Quest keeps its IDs handy on Merit Spotlight Club nights. The chic Warehouse District bar hosts all-age shows with bands like Insane Clown Posse and Static-X. But concerts sponsored by the Philip Morris brand – Big Bad Voodoo Daddy, say, or Cherry Poppin’ Daddies – are strictly 21-plus.
Meanwhile, on the streets of Manhattan, Lucky Strike’s marketing crew members ask for nothing as they give out coffee to office workers on smoke breaks. That mid-day cigarette is all the badge they need to see. The Brown & Williamson brand has a simple message: Lucky Loves You.
Tobacco has entered an era of Insider Marketing – inside bars, with inside jokes, and an intimacy that at least ignores non-smokers and, at most, creates an invitation-only atmosphere that maintains brand cachet.
So while teens step out to summits and street parties, tobacco marketers are holding court in bars and exchanging knowing winks on street corners. Marketing restrictions in the Master Settlement Agreement have narrowed tobacco promotions to direct mail and 21-plus venues. That sets the stage for very effective one-to-one campaigns.
“It’s very challenging, because the climate [against tobacco marketing] holds us to a higher standard legally and creatively,” says Jonathan Ressler, president of Brown & Williamson’s agency, Big Fat Promotion, New York City. “Legally, we don’t even blur the edges. More importantly, there’s a higher creative standard. It’s all about the execution. This is direct-contact marketing.”
B&W’s flagship brand, Lucky Strike, goes into 10 markets this fall with a quirky street campaign it tested in six cities last Christmas. The Lucky Strike Force had nothing to do with tobacco – and everything to do with attitude. Strike Force members dressed in street clothes approach smokers huddled outside office buildings or airport terminals, giving away coffee and free cell-phone calls.
The congenial Strike Force wears no logo or brand (although “the jet-pack coffee dispenser is kind of a giveaway,” Ressler admits), but it didn’t take smokers long to see teams coming. “We’d hear comments like, `Marlboro can keep their Miles, I’ll take my coffee,'” Ressler recalls. “It was so powerful because nothing could be branded. It was so uncontrived, so real, that it worked.”
The campaign hinges on having the right reps. Big Fat recruits via nightclubs and bars, looking for under-30 individualists with lots of self-confidence. “People had to have a big enough personality to approach a group of people they don’t know and really connect,” Ressler explains. “We didn’t have to train them, beyond giving them the key content that Lucky loves smokers and enhances smoking moments. We told them, `Go be yourselves.'” (Reps get rigorous training directly from B&W under Master Settlement Agreement guidelines.)
B&W maintains an aggressive slate of bar promos, too. It began a national campaign last month called Lucky Strike Band to Band, hosting contests between local groups. Bar patrons vote to send bands on to regional and then national competitions. The top winner gets a CD produced by B&W. “It’s a good fit for us, because we know club clientele is at least 21,” says B&W spokesman Steven Kottak. “It’s good for the venues, too, because they get more talented musicians and patrons get better entertainment.”
B&W has put most of its marketing behind Lucky Strike since parent British American Tobacco bought the brand in 1994. An April-through-August sweeps, LS Means _ , plays off the long-standing tagline, “Lucky Strike Means Fine Tobacco” (abbreviated to “LSMFT” on packs). Entrants fill in the blank with their favorite prize that starts with “FT” – football tickets, for example, which could trigger a trip to the Super Bowl. Direct-mail entry forms are distributed at Band to Band events and via print ads, e-mail, and a toll-free number.
Behind Bars
Competition for exclusivity in bars is fierce. Market leader Philip Morris limits its bar nights to 21-plus venues, running nothing in 18-and-over clubs. PM crews “make a good-faith effort to make sure valid IDs are shown at the door,” but don’t photocopy IDs before letting patrons participate, says PM spokesman Tom Ryan. Crews don’t pressure patrons to play, but “when Marlboro is sponsoring a bar night promotion, we expect people there are interested in our products.”
Bar events and direct-mail support sweepstakes like Marlboro Racing School, which sent 250 winners to California and Florida race schools this spring. The popular Party at the Ranch is on hold while PM upgrades its Crazy Horse, MT, ranch, which hosts winners (who must be smokers) and their guests (who don’t have to smoke).
Long-running loyalty program Marlboro Miles is “still a very popular program,” even though smokers can’t get branded items anymore, Ryan says. Catalogs are mailed only to subscribers who certify they’re over 21.
R.J. Reynolds Tobacco is using its bar network to launch Camel Exotic Blends, four flavored cigarettes sold via bars and CML, the magazine/catalog RJR launched last October. (The slick quarterly profiles bars.) Salem last month broke the second year of Orb-e, a national contest that introduces emerging artists, comedians, designers, and musicians to art and entertainment leaders. Entrants perform regionally in bars and other 21-plus venues for a chance to perform before consumers and industry leaders at an event dubbed “The Chosen.” Event attendees added to Salem’s database get mailings with unusual tchotchkes such as fortune cookies.
RJR was sued by California’s attorney general in May (and drew fire from Arizona’s AG in January) over direct-mail sampling. California attorney general Bill Lockyer filed suit in San Diego, charging RJR with violating the Master Settlement Agreement, which allows tobacco marketers to give free samples to Californians only for “legitimate consumer testing and coupon-style offerings,” according to the AG’s office.
Lockyer alleges that RJR mailed 900,000 packs to 115,000 Californians – as many as 10 packs to a single consumer. The suit says RJR didn’t verify recipients’ names and addresses, didn’t ensure they’d reach the intended recipient, and didn’t get prior permission to send the samples. RJR contends the samples were sent only to adults over 21 and contained a reply card asking for consumers’ opinions of the brand. It also claims the cigarettes “were clearly intended for consumer evaluation,” says spokesperson Carole Crosslin. “Each mailer had a response card and toll-free number for smokers to call and log in their assessment of the brand … which they did in large numbers.” A hearing is set for July 10.
In February, RJR began a $10 million overhaul of its national direct-mail sampling system in response to complaints from the Arizona attorney general (March promo). Two Arizona residents complained that they got Winston samples they didn’t request. Someone apparently had falsified Reynolds’ verification forms, which consumers fill out to get samples via mail. One form bore the name of a man who’d been dead for 18 years.
Dennis Burke, special assistant to the AG, speculated that field reps working the bars who didn’t meet their quotas took names and addresses out of the phone book and made up birth dates. Reynolds put the company handling bar sign-ups on probation, stopped sampling nationally in January, and contacted all consumers on its list to double-check that they wanted samples.
