Newsweek columnist Anna Quindlen used her column this week to criticize a cigarette brand and its advertising. She says the Camel 9 brand, packaged in black with hot-pink foil, is designed to rope in younger girls as cigarette consumers.
Earlier this year, New York Times ad industry reporter Stuart Elliott covered the launch of Camel 9, the positive reaction of investors and the company's move to market the "male" Camel brand to female consumers.
NPR also has a package on Camel 9 that's worth listening to.
Quindlen does a good job reminding us all that this is a legal product. Do the congressmen who knocked on magazine editors' doors to get them to eschew Camel 9 ads have a decent strategy? Is that one way to keep this brand from marketing to girls? Is it marketing to girls? If it's not, should ads be pulled or should women be allowed to decide whether they smoke and whether their brand is Camel 9? If you worked in an agency, what kinds of ethical decisions would you have to make in marketing products that are legal but reviled by some (cigarettes, liquor, guns, fast food, sugary drinks ... the list is getting longer)? Who are the stakeholders when we make ethical decisions in advertising?
Sunday, September 30, 2007
Smoking and Advertising
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8 comments:
I think it is perfectly clear that this is a cigarette marketed to girls and women. I worked at a convenience store over the summer, and I saw young women (over 18) come in and ask us if we had the new "pink Camels" or the Camel with "the hot pink packaging."
Tobacco companies are not going away any time soon, and while this is a legal product, I worry about the young girls who will see this cigarette and be immediately attracted to it for the same reasons that older women currently are.
This is a successful marketing strategy for a legal product. Whether it is ethical is a completely different story.
This is really strange. I work at the Open Pantry, and we sell those cigarettes. I can tell you first hand that no guy has ever come in to buy those, ever... We talked about it at work before I read this article. The advertisement is blatantly targeted towards girls. Even worse, though, is that it is working. I even heard a girl the other day say, "oh, that ones pretty, lets buy it!"
I agree that this cigarette is being marketed to girls. It was a good try by those congressmen to go to the magazines and ask them not to run the ad. But it didn't work, so it wasn't a decent strategy.
I'd sooner find a new job than market a cigarette.
while i think smoking is quite vile and camel's "chanel no. 9" approach is sneaky, it's their right as a company to market their product to whomever they want with whatever means is legal.
virginia slims or any other female geared cigarette company (i obviously don't know much about cigarettes)are not forced to change marketing schemes which invoke ideas of sexiness or a stress-free lifestyle.
unfortunately, camel's marketing strategy is extremely effective, but it's by no means unethical. it's a question of whether this new fad will rub off on little girls like the gruff image of the marlboro man probably had an effect on young boys. unfortunately (again), smoking is a learned habit and it seems like, as long as anyone smokes, impressionable people - young or old - will be enticed into doing so.
I don't think the marketing of these cigarettes is unethical, because it is promoting a legal product. It is controversial, because smoking is deemed as unhealthy. The company is trying to get money and I don't think it is out of line to do so by targeting women.
However, it would be hard to know that you are the one marketing a product with such negative side effects.
Is it ethical? I wouldn't call it ethical, but I certainly wouldn't call it unethical either. It falls into that ambiguous grey zone (which why we're discussing it here). Some have argued that it's not unethical because it's legal. Well, I'm not sure that's such solid logic as the law is not exactly based on the strictest of moral codes, nor does it come from the minds of the most moral of people either (corrupt legislators=ethical? umm...)
It's funny that poster 'marlon heimerl' has never seen a guy buy a pack of No.9's because actually I know a few guys that have purchased them; it's not their regular 'brand' per se, but they've bought them nonetheless because they're tasty. And to answer the question that some of you might be wondering, yes, I do know of both heterosexual and homosexual men that have smoked them... Frankly, I rather like them and have bought them a few times in the past. Then again, I think pink is cool...
I hadn't read the Quindlen article before I posted on this thread last, and she has some good points (of course). One point she made was that Congress has avoided delegating all control over the tobacco situation to the FDA because they would obviously ban them completely. This is where the intervention of the government and that of anti-smoking activists really begins to bother me. I wholeheartedly agree that the No.9 campaign is awful and I do not support it in the least. But it's nothing new from Camel. However, when the government starts robbing the ability of adults to make stupid choices (that only harm themselves, of course), that's when I think things are getting out of hand. Take alcohol for instance. More bad things come from it than good. There are more people dead from drunk driving than there are people alive from the benefits of red wine. Provided adults (not kids) don't break the law, get in a car, etc., when they're drinking, I don't think the govt. has grounds for intervention. Same with tobacco. No advertising should be directed at kids; that equals bad news. However, I smoke and drink and wouldn't want activists getting in the way of my adult enjoyment of things that might end up killing me. Because as much as you think smoking is vile (and it is, and I've smoked) some people enjoy it - and as long as they're not smoking around kids and blowing second-hand smoke at people, then I think it's no problem. What if cigars were to be banned? What if you were well-cognizant of the risks you take when you smoke, but you want to smoke when you get wasted? I say no problem to that, but yes, keep it away from the kids.
i like the comparison of cigarette ads to alcohol ads. though the death rates do not compare, rates of emotional instability, addiction, abuse etc. for alcohol are significantly larger than cigarettes. alcohol ads still show no shame in their target audience.
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