Smoking, branding, and the meaning of life

What are the best known words in the world? . . . Sex? . . . Life? . . . Death? . . . Jesus?

No. They’re Coca Cola.

This is a tribute to the immense power of branding. In essence, Coke (notice we even have a pet name for it) is just a fizzy drink, but it has a turnover approaching £9000 million (US$ 14 000 million) in some 185 countries and its familiar bottle, font, and red and white livery are symbols of fun, freedom, and the American way of life across vastly different cultures. And Coke is not alone: Kodak, Sony, Gillette, Levi, Marlboro, and countless other brands each provide mundane products with distinctive values and personalities.

This issue of Tobacco Control contains three articles that illustrate the power and ubiquity of branding in the tobacco market.1-3

Arnett and Terhanian1 present a simple but elegant study showing that adolescents are very much aware of cigarette advertisements, that they like the ads, and that they feel that the ads make smoking more appealing. Furthermore, smokers are more likely than non-smokers to sense this reinforcement, and all the effects they found are more marked for Marlboro and Camel—the brand leaders among young people.

This study adds to an extensive literature, which began with the seminal research by Aitken et al in the UK during the 1980s, showing that among all children, and especially amongst those who smoke or are inclined to smoke, there is a disturbingly high awareness of, familiarity with, and appreciation of tobacco advertising.4 This picture has been confirmed most recently in a longitudinal study by Pierce and colleagues,5 which showed that involvement with tobacco promotion predicts the onset of smoking. All this research provides compelling evidence that advertising encourages the uptake, and reinforces …