Promotion

• Promotion Details (PDF)
  
  
• Promotion Fact Sheet (Contents of this page as PDF)

Even mere awareness of a tobacco promotional event increases youth smoking susceptibility...

One study found that a child who is aware of tobacco promotional activities and has a friend who owns tobacco promotional items is 3.4 times more likely to smoke than others who do not.11

At least two other studies have shown to that desire to own tobacco promotional items increases youth susceptibility to smoking almost as much as does actually owning those items.12,13

“The fragile, developing self-image of the young person needs all the support and enhancement it can get. Smoking may appear to enhance that self-image in a variety of ways. If one values, for example, an adventurous, sophisticated, adult image, smoking may enhance ones self-image…This self-image enhancement effect has traditionally been a strong promotional theme for cigarette brands and should continue to be emphasized.”

- RJ Reyonolds Tobacco Company, from a document entitled, Some Thoughts About New Brands of Cigarettes for the Youth Market, 1973.

An estimated 1/3 of adolescent experimentation with smoking can be directly attributed to tobacco promotional activities...

If a child is not only aware of, but has also participated in, tobacco promotional activities, (s)he is 9.3 times more likely to smoke than kids not aware of tobacco promotions. And if that child received free tobacco product samples while participating in a tobacco promotion, that child will be 21.8 times more likely to smoke than the other kids.14

• In a longitudinal study, children who owned a tobacco promotional item and who named a brand that attracted their attentions, were 2.7 times more likely to become established smokers within the next 5 years.15
  
  
• Research has shown that branded tobacco paraphernalia is used by youth to ‘try on’ or to assimilate the identity of a smoker.16 As shown in Philip Morris documents as early as 1969, the permanence of that ‘identity’ is soon to follow: “Smoking a cigarette for the beginner is a symbolic act, . . . ‘I am not my mother’s child, I’m tough, I am an adventurer, I’m not square’ . . . As the force from the psychological symbolism subdues, the pharmocological effect takes over to sustain the habit.”17
  

  
  “[Jack Daniels’ merchandising campaign is] an example of a viable positioning executed in a ‘nonstandard’ but authentic and unpretentious way, which not only reached [young adult] consumers, but converted [younger adults] into walking billboards.”
  
  - RJ Reynolds Tobacco Company, from a document entitled, Are Younger Adult Smokers Important?, 1985.
  
  

  
  "[T]he base of our business is the high school student.” Lorillard .
  
  - Tobacco Company Executive, 1978
  
  

References

11Altman, David G., et al. “Tobacco Promotion and Susceptibility to Tobacco Use among Adolescents Aged 12-17 Years in a Nationally Representative Sample.” American Journal of Public Health. Nov 1996; 86(11):1590-1593.

12Feighery, Ellen, et al. “Seeing, wanting, owning: the relationship between receptivity
to tobacco marketing and smoking susceptibility in young people.” Tobacco Control. 1998; 7:123-128. Available at http://tc.bmjjournals.com/cgi/reprint/7/2/123

13Pierce, John P., et al. “Tobacco industry promotion of cigarettes and adolescent smoking.” JAMA. February 1998; 279(7):511-515.

14Altman, David G., et al. “Tobacco Promotion and Susceptibility to Tobacco Use among Adolescents Aged 12-17 Years in a Nationally Representative Sample.” American Journal of Public Health. Nov 1996; 86(11):1590-1593.

15Biener, Lois, and Siegal, Michael. “Tobacco Marketing and Adolescent Smoking: More support for a casual inference.” American Journal of Public Health. March 2000; 90(3):407-11.

16Feighery, Ellen, et al. “Seeing, wanting, owning: the relationship between receptivity to tobacco marketing and smoking susceptibility in young people.” Tobacco Control. 1998; 7:123-128. Available at http://tc.bmjjournals.com/cgi/reprint/7/2/123

17“Why One Smokes.” 1969 Draft Report to the Philip Morris Board of Directors. Document Bates NO.1003287836.

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