Banned from ads, tobacco companies use cigarette sticks for marketing
(Reuters Health) - In many countries, tobacco companies face restrictions on advertising, including on cigarette packs. This leaves the cigarette itself as an important "branding" medium, researchers say.
Nearly all tobacco companies decorate cigarettes to enhance their appeal to smokers and possible future smokers, which goes against the purpose of banning advertising, the study team writes in the journal Tobacco Control. Right now, only tobacco companies are using this valuable advertising "real estate," they add.
"The cigarette itself is a powerful conveyor of branding," lead author Katherine Smith, of the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health in Baltimore told Reuters Health by email. "As we think about protecting people from potentially harmful tobacco marketing, we need to not forget the cigarette itself."
Noting that the tobacco industry has shifted its focus to lower and middle-income countries, the research team also chose to focus on 14 low- and middle-income countries with the greatest number of smokers. These included Bangladesh, Brazil, China, Egypt, India, Indonesia, Mexico, Pakistan, the Philippines, Russian Federation, Thailand, Turkey, Ukraine and Vietnam.
Some two-thirds of the world's tobacco users live in those 14 countries, according to the Bloomberg Initiative to Reduce Tobacco Use, which funded the study.
In 2013, the study team collected 3,232 cigarette and clove cigarette (kretek) packs from high- and low-income neighborhoods in 44 cities in the selected countries. The researchers assessed one cigarette from each pack, taking note of brand names, logos, color and design, and various decorative elements.
There was some form of branding on virtually every cigarette in the study and 97 percent of the sticks featured a brand name or logo.
Colors on the package were also carried over to cigarette sticks 95 percent of the time and 13 percent of samples featured a design or decoration matching the pack.
Printed or cut-out decorations on the filter tip like dots, a heart or a smiley face were present on 8 percent of cigarette sticks. Some designs were functional as well, with 2.6 percent of cigarettes showing symbols where smokers could press to release a flavor capsule.
Many countries are now requiring plain packaging for tobacco, with only the brand name in a designated font and size, noted Janet Hoek, a researcher at the University of Otago in New Zealand who was not involved in the study.
Australia has extended this restriction to cigarette sticks themselves, requiring the sticks to be plain white with no branding at all, the study team writes. Canada is now set to follow suit, they add.
"Countries should be going beyond what Australia has done," Hoek said by email, "sticks should look as unappealing as possible."
Hoek said her own research shows that smokers are dissuaded by unappealing colors or a "minutes of life lost" graphic on the cigarette.
"Unattractive sticks link smoking to its consequences, something tobacco companies try to avoid by using 'pure' white sticks," Hoek said. "Changing the stick appearance could thus play a powerful role in reframing smoking as a dangerous and distasteful behavior."
Smith agreed that other countries should follow Australia's lead in adopting plain packaging. "Beyond that, tobacco control should perhaps be considering advocating for policies that include health warning labels on the sticks themselves," she said.
SOURCE: bit.ly/2bjQpAV Tobacco Control, online August 16, 2016.
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