Cigarette Marketing 2001

U.S. CIGARETTE MARKETING, 2001: THE LOWEST RING OF THE INFERNO

James R. Rosenfield

March 12, 2001

The marketers' Inferno would be a well-peopled place, I fear.

In the upper circles are the merely amoral: the guys and gals who peddle products by making people feel bad about themselves (health and beauty aids, for example, or fashions). The ones who pitch fast foods and other toxins. The ones who manipulate children.

But surely in the lowest ring, where fire and ice meet, dwell the folks who sell cigarettes in the Year 2001, when even the tobacco companies themselves have conceded that these things kill.

In the U.S., cigarette manufacturers have become highly skilled direct marketers. At one point, in fact, RJ Reynolds probably had one of the richest and most sophisticated consumer databases in the world.

RJ Reynolds used to be king of the mail channel, but these days, forbidden to use the charismatic Joe Camel, RJR seems to have slunk back into billboards and point-of-sale. Philip Morris, the most insidious of them all, has been mostly a dabbler in direct marketing, and these days sticks to print and P.R. (Apropos the latter, last year Philip Morris spent $60 million on charities and good works, and $102 million publicizing the same!)

That leaves Brown & Williamson, who are, so to speak, absolutely smokin' when it comes to direct marketing. Let's see what they're up to…

A BRAND REVIVAL, AND THE MYSTERIOUS “SLASH FIELD”

A red mailer was received at my house, addressed to “Slash Field,” a truncation of “Slash Rosenfield,” who is a cat.

It's for Lucky Strike, a brand heavily promoted in the 3^rd World, but one that's long been virtually invisible in the U.S. The mailer proclaims Lucky's once famous motto, “L.S./M.F.T. (Lucky Strike Means Fine Tobacco),” but amended to “Lucky Strike/Means Fabulous Tan.” Illustrating this is a retro drawing of a man on a lounge chair tanning himself, with a big red question mark over his head.

Over the years, I've met a number of tobacco marketers, and one thing I've noticed about them is their utter obtuseness. One guy I know went on to work for an airline, where he used a mock-cigarette pack warning on a frequent flyer promotion! I suspect the same rock-headedness is behind the linkage of cigarette smoking and tanning, both cancer-inducing activities.

It turns out the package has nothing to do with tanning whatsoever: It's a sweepstakes, inviting contestants to “Think of a dream prize beginning with the letters F and T.” There's also a coupon for a free pack of “Luckies, An American Original.” Note the faux patriotism. If, as Dr. Johnson said, patriotism is the last refuge of the scoundrel, what's going on here staggers the imagination.

Another thing I've noticed about tobacco marketers is a kind of Freudian tropism towards clumsy, unconsciously black-humored double entendres, perhaps engendered by repressed guilt. The copy at the bottom of the mailer reads “Lucky you. You get a free pack of Luckies.” The double-entendre I'll leave to your imagination.

Here's how the sweepstakes works:

“1. Think of a dream prize beginning with the letters F and T.

2. It's up to you what F and T can stand for, so be creative! For example if you say Football Tickets, you and a friend could win an all-expenses-paid trip to the game of your choice.

3. To enter: Photocopy your ID; fill out and send in the enclosed entry form…One lucky winner will be picked by random drawing.”

The mailing is clever, well-designed, involving, and in fact brilliant in the way it ties the Lucky Strike motto into the idea of a self-designed sweepstakes.

No one ever said the devil was dumb.

BROWN & WILLIAMSON: AN EQUAL OPPORTUNITY KILLER

The folks at Brown & Williamson assume that the afore-mentioned Slash Field is an African-American, because she qualified herself as a Kools smoker. It's well-known among the tobacco folks, evidently, that menthol cigarettes in the U.S. are primarily smoked by black people. (Go to an African-American neighborhood, and you'll see all the tobacco guys pushing their menthol brands via outdoor advertising.)

And indeed the slick magazine sent to Slash, ONE WORLD, is conspicuously aimed at African-Americans. There's nary a white face to be found! The magazine is exceedingly well-produced, the equal of anything you'd find on the newsstand, with interesting articles (e.g., about Ralph Ellison's posthumously published novel), lots and lots of sex, and oodles of ads for Kools.

The message, of course, is the eternal message of cigarette marketing: Smoke me, and I'll make you young, rich, and beautiful.

According to an article I just read in a trade journal, Brown & Williamson have other custom-published magazines, REAL EDGE, aimed at “21-to-30 year old men,” and FLAIR, targeted to “women ages 21 to 35.”

Never have those militaristic marketing terms “aimed” and “targeted” been more appropriately used! According to the trade journal, the custom-published magazines are distributed (and presumably produced) by Hearst, in case your investment decisions are at all socially conscious.

Equal opportunity killers, I guess. Of course Asia is the real growth area for the U.S. tobacco manufacturers. Hundreds of millions of smokers, increasingly susceptible to the cachet of American name brands. A few years back, in the Kuala Lumpur's Central Market, I saw several pretty teen-aged girls handing out free sample packs of Marlboros to other teen-agers. This took place at the same time that Philip Morris was running weekly ads on the Op-Ed page of THE NEW YORK TIMES, weeping crocodile tears over youth smoking.

SMOKE LOTS OF CIGARETTES, GET FREE GIFTS!

Some ad agency big thinker came up with a positioning for Carlton Cigarettes: “Think about Number 1.” That's because “Only Carlton delivers 1 mg. Tar…” The positioning enables lots of play, e.g.: “Isn't it time you started thinking about Number 1,” and “The Number 1 Collection of Savings and Free Gifts.”

The “thinking about Number 1” is another example of the sheer obtuseness of cigarette promotions, since such thinking would presumably prompt quick discard of the cigarette habit. But I suspect that this kind of whistling-past-the-graveyard approach is psychologically powerful, just as the photos of sculpted young beauties puffing away are irresistibly seductive.

Carlton is aimed at females, and an attractive young woman is shown thinking about Number 1. She's sitting on the floor next to a 1960-vintage record player, holding an LP.

Two ‘60s sofas and louvered windows from the same period provide the soft-focus background.

The nostalgia is very nicely executed (as it were), and apropos from a Millennial standpoint. It's not merely decorative though. Its function is to remind smokers subliminally of a simpler, less hectic time, before the Surgeon General's report told folks that smoking kills.

Are Brown & Williamson, their researchers, and their agencies clever enough to have done this on purpose? Yes, I think so. It wouldn't surprise me if smokers in focus groups pine for an earlier time, when you could smoke openly anywhere, rather than shivering in front of buildings. (In fact, California is talking about laws eliminating outdoor smoking, which would confine smokers to their cars and homes, since smoking is already banned indoors, including in bars.)

“The Number 1 Collection of Savings and Free Gifts” offers products that can be purchased only with Universal Product Codes from Carlton cigarette packs. The first two products involve stress-relief, “A Massager With Magnetic Appeal” and “A Sound Approach to Stress Relief” (a white-noise machine). The message here is hardly subliminal: It's a reminder of why you smoke in the first place, to relax (or to think or to kill time or after sex or after dinner or when you feel good or when you feel bad…hey, it's the perfect habit!).

“HAVE YOUR CIGARETTES DELIVERED DIRECTLY TO YOU!”

The real tour de force for Brown & Williamson is a mail order catalog selling not gifts, but the main item itself, cigarettes.

Pretty good thinking, wouldn't you agree? A database can be a distribution channel as well as a communications channel, after all. Database distribution doesn't work for most packaged goods because their margins are too thin. That's not the case with cigarettes, a product so profitable that Philip Morris, for example, clings to it in spite of strategic diversification and the irreparable harm to what's left of its reputation. You just can't make that kind of money anywhere else!

Plus, who wants to be seen buying cigarettes? It's déclassé, to say the least, plus the act of purchasing a carton must create conflict for many smokers. Mail order to the rescue! It's always been a channel for embarrassing products (remember the classic “Throw Away That Truss!” ads from the back pages of THE POLICE GAZETTE). And the deferred gratification of mail order has to help ease the psychological conflicts of the purchase.

Unfortunately for Brown & Williamson, there are some legal problems here. The state of New York passed a law last year forbidding mail order cigarette sales, which B & W is fighting in court. If they lose, other states may pass the same kind of statute, cutting off the nascent mail order business in its infancy.

Many of the brands in the catalog are targeted to women, which makes sense in a catalog sent to Chienne Rosenfield, a now-deceased cat. The only models are a spiffy blond holding a phallic Superslim Capri in the direction of a man's lost profile and a tousled brunette holding a Misty in a sort of pre-ejaculatory position. This is completely purposeful, although the ad agencies, clients, art directors, and models would all deny it.

Remember: Smoking not only makes you rich, young, and beautiful. It also makes you desirable.

Back to the marketers' Inferno: Most advertising is a lie. But there are bold-faced lies, and subtle lies. The latter are by far the most dangerous, and indeed the most diabolical. Unless he's having a bad day, the devil never lies to your face. Nor do the cigarette merchants.