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.