Taking ad-Vantage of lax advertising regulation in the USA and Canada: Reassuring and distracting health-concerned smokers

Abstract

We explored the evolution from cigarette product attributes to psychosocial needs in advertising campaigns for low-tar cigarettes. Analysis of previously secret tobacco industry documents and print advertising images indicated that low-tar brands targeted smokers who were concerned about their health with advertising images intended to distract them from the health hazards of smoking. Advertising first emphasized product characteristics (filtration, low tar) that implied health benefits. Over time, advertising emphasis shifted to salient psychosocial needs of the target markets. A case study of Vantage cigarettes in the USA and Canada showed that advertising presented images of intelligent, upward-striving people who had achieved personal success and intentionally excluded the act of smoking from the imagery, while minimal product information was provided.

This illustrates one strategy to appeal to concerned smokers by not describing the product itself (which may remind smokers of the problems associated with smoking), but instead using evocative imagery to distract smokers from these problems. Current advertising for potential reduced-exposure products (PREPs) emphasizes product characteristics, but these products have not delivered on the promise of a healthier alternative cigarette. Our results suggest that the tobacco control community should be on the alert for a shift in advertising focus for PREPs to the image of the user rather than the cigarette. Global Framework Convention on Tobacco Control-style advertising bans that prohibit all user imagery in tobacco advertising could preempt a psychosocial needs-based advertising strategy for PREPs and maintain public attention on the health hazards of smoking.

Introduction

In the 1950s the American tobacco industry greatly increased its offerings of filtered cigarettes, followed by low-tar cigarettes in the late 1960s and 1970s, in response to burgeoning scientific evidence and growing public knowledge of the health risks associated with smoking (Glantz, Slade, Bero, Hanauer, & Barnes, 1996). This initiated a dramatic shift in the cigarette market; by 2001, 97% of smokers in the USA used filtered cigarettes (US Department of Health and Human Services, 2001), and 88.7% of all cigarettes sold in the USA were low-tar cigarettes (Federal Trade Commission, 2003). The adoption of low-tar cigarettes was followed by a de-escalation of quit ratios (ratio of former smokers to current plus former smokers) in the USA between 1965 and 1983 (US Department of Health and Human Services, 2005).

A substantial body of research demonstrates the fallacy of low-tar, low-yield, or light and ultra-light cigarettes (Bates, McNeill, Jarvis, & Gray, 1999; Djordjevic, Stellman, & Zang, 2000; Hoffman & Hoffman, 1997; Jarvis, Boreham, Primatesta, Feyerabend, & Bryant, 2001). The industry re-engineered cigarettes to skew machine measurements of tar and nicotine yields toward significant underestimation (King, Carter, Borland, Chapman, & Gray, 2003). Low-tar advertising has been intentionally misleading (Leavell, 1999), reassuring health-concerned smokers who are considering quitting that smoking low-tar cigarettes is a proactive health measure (Pollay & Dewhirst, 2002).

Smokers often switched to low-tar products as a step towards quitting (Kozlowski et al., 1998), though switching does not make low-tar smokers more likely to quit (Gilpin, Emery, White, & Pierce, 2002; Hyland, Hughes, Farrelly, & Cummings, 2003) and may make them less likely to do so (Ling & Glantz, 2004). Epidemiological studies of lung cancer (Harris, Thun, Mondul, & Calle, 2004; Stellman, Muscat, Thompson, Hoffman, & Wynder, 1997; Thun & Burns, 2001) and peripheral arterial disease (Powell et al., 1997) show no health benefits of low-tar cigarettes.

Potential reduced-exposure products (PREPs) are the newest products developed to provide smokers with an alternative to quitting. Just as the introduction of filtered and then low-tar products followed the publication of tobacco-related health risks, PREPs are being test-marketed, largely in the USA, amidst growing public knowledge about the risks of secondhand smoke and the decreasing social acceptability of smoking. Some of these products have failed (Brown & Williamson's Advance, RJ Reynolds’ Premier), and some are struggling (Vector's Quest, introduced as Lorillard's Omni; Philip Morris’ Accord, called Oasis in Japan). R.J. Reynolds’ (RJR) Eclipse is available through toll-free number in the US and in selected stores. Advertisements introducing PREPs claim significant reductions in smoke and odor (Philip Morris, 1997; RJ Reynolds, 2005a), carcinogens (Vector Group (author inferred), 2001), or risk of cancer (RJ Reynolds, 2005a).

Tobacco companies identify psychosocial needs salient to different segments of the market and position brands of cigarettes as capable of satisfying those needs. Women (Anderson, Glantz, & Ling, 2005), African American adults (Balbach, Gasior, & Barbeau, 2003), the lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender community (Smith & Malone, 2003), Asian Americans (Muggli, Pollay, Lew, & Joseph, 2002), youth (Pollay, 2000), and young adults of both sexes (Ling & Glantz, 2002) have all been targeted with psychosocial appeals in tobacco advertising. We distinguish between cigarette advertising campaigns that deliver a product-focused message from those that deliver a needs-focused message. The term “product-focus” indicates that the main emphasis in an advertisement is on a physical product characteristic, such as a filter type or cigarette length, or on some selling point seemingly due to the physical product characteristics, such as good breath or low throat irritation. The term “needs-focus” refers to the major emphasis in the advertisement being a specific psychosocial need and, particularly, the satisfaction of that need. For example, Philip Morris (PM) capitalized on “closet smokers’” need to feel accepted and included rather than rejected and ostracized with the late 1980s–early 1990s Benson & Hedges “For People Who Like to Smoke” campaign (Anderson et al., 2005). Though this shift from product focus to needs focus is not unique to cigarettes, the addictive and harmful nature of tobacco relative to other consumer goods sets cigarette advertising apart and necessitates a rapid advertising evolution. Marketers of cigarettes have a particular challenge to cast a positive light on a consumer product that kills people when used as intended.

This paper is meant to serve several purposes. First, we describe a shift in advertising for low-tar brands away from a product-focused message to a psychosocial needs-focused message. Second, we report a case study of advertising for a major brand in the low-tar segment, RJR's Vantage in the USA, and we corroborate our USA findings with concurrent advertising for Vantage in Canada. Our intent is to uncover the motivations for de-emphasizing product-based arguments for using Vantage in favor of eliciting positive affect unrelated to smoking and the mechanisms by which RJR and their advertising agencies attempted to do so. We then explore implications for the advertising of PREPs, such as RJR's Eclipse.

RJR's Vantage brand presents an excellent opportunity to study the shift from product-focused to needs-focused advertising. First, RJR has historically shown an affinity for solving smoking problems with new products (Ling & Glantz, 2005; Pollay & Dewhirst, 2003). Second, Vantage was one of the early leaders in the low-tar segment (Author Unknown (1980), Author Unknown (1990)) and was a pioneer in the use of the psychographic segmentation techniques that became popular among advertisers in the 1970s (Demby, 1971; Plummer, 1971). Third, during the studied period, 1970–1988, Vantage launched seven different advertising campaigns. This provides a valuable opportunity to document the diversity of means that RJR, its ad agencies, and market research firms thought were potentially efficacious in addressing the health-concerned smoker. Vantage's advertising history also presents an opportunity to anticipate advertising strategies for PREPs, as RJR's cigarette-like PREP, Eclipse, was first introduced under the name “Eclipse by Vantage” to capitalize on Vantage's perceived “health heritage” (RJ Reynolds, 1996).