SS 16.00-17.30 Special sessions
Of the four mix elements, promotion tends to attract most attention, and within this advertising is attacked by the health lobby most vociferously. However, promotion (Kotler, Marketing management: analysis, planning and control, 1991) includes all manner of above and below the line communication with the customer such as direct mail, competitions, coupons, line extensions, sports sponsorship and, not least, the product's packaging. All these promotional efforts are focused on building and maintaining brands. Branding (Hastings et al. Cigarette advertising and children's smoking: why Reg was withdrawn, 1994) adds emotional values to cigarettes, such as reassurance, familiarity and identity and at a more prosaic level it facilitates consumption, particularly by the young and inexperienced.
The other three marketing tools are also crucial. Distribution ensures that cigarettes are readily available in comfortingly normal and respectable outlet; pricing policy, and related sales promotion schemes, minimise the cost of purchase and product variations such as tar level can introduce a semblance of reassurance about the safety of smoking. All three are also used to reinforce branding.
The second plank of the industry's marketing strategy is to undermine and attack any criticism of tobacco. Over the years they have continually denied that smoking damages people's health, that nicotine is addictive and that their marketing efforts encourage smoking. In each case the aim is to sow doubt, to keep the debate going, to buy time.
The crucial point to note is that the tobacco industry's marketing strategy is carefully thought out and coherent. It doesn't rely on advertising alone to sell cigarettes, it uses a range of marketing tools and lobbying tactics to achieve this. By extension, society's response has to be equally comprehensive. Yes, advertising should be banned, but other elements of tobacco marketing must be combatted with the same determination. The industry's marketing strategy must be opposed by an equally coherent demarketing strategy.
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