Study: Point of Sale advertising major cause of teen smoking

Tobacco companies are using increasingly sophisticated marketing techniques to circumvent the law and promote their brands to young people, according to health experts.
Cigarette advertising is banned in the EU, but wily tobacco giants are increasingly targeting young people through social networking sites such as Facebook and at major music festivals to create a "buzz" around their products.
A survey of the major youth-orientated summer festivals held across the UK has revealed that the events have become a key target for tobacco firms. Action on Smoking and Health (ASH) says that they provide powerful marketing opportunities for cigarette manufacturers to establish "a potent but unconscious bond between their brands and the intense experience of the festival".
Several of the UK's biggest festivals have allowed tobacco firms to sell their products on site in ways that have been condemned by health experts. This weekend's Lovebox festival in east London's Victoria Park, headlined by Roxy Music, is co-sponsored by Imperial Tobacco's Rizla rolling paper, which is exempt from the ban on tobacco advertising. An Imperial spokesman said the brand had sponsored a number of festivals. "It's all part of creating brand awareness and it's entirely legitimate."
At last year's Latitude festival in Suffolk, only Marlboro cigarettes could be sold. The cigarettes were available in black-and-red kiosks that lit up at night and were sold by young, attractive staff wearing "Marlboro Red" T-shirts and sunglasses. Only "special edition" boxes of Marlboro were available from the kiosks, which also offered "festival edition" lighters. This year's festival, which is being held this weekend, has seen a similar exclusive deal signed with John Player Special cigarettes, manufactured by Imperial Tobacco.
At last year's Big Chill in Herefordshire, five large cigarette stands that were illuminated at night sold only brands produced by JTI, which include Camel, Benson and Hedges and Amber Leaf. The stands, which sold limited edition packs and cigarettes at a reduced price, were staffed by "promotion girls" dressed in white uniforms. Festival "packages" were also available, containing two packs of cigarettes in a box that came with a lighter and glow stick and could be worn around the neck. Cigarette "stub tidys" bearing the JTI and Gallaher tobacco company brands were given away, while customised camper vans sold rolling tobacco.
At the Wakestock festival in Wales in 2008, reduced-price cigarettes, again manufactured by JTI whose brands also include Silk Cut, were promoted in stylish porthole displays, erected on a split-level stand staffed by attractive female sales staff dressed in pink and white uniforms.
"The tobacco industry needs to recruit new young smokers as their existing customers either quit or die," said Deborah Arnott, chief executive of ASH. "Their problem is that all but a few smokers start by the age of 18 and by that time they have made the brand choice that will last many of them a lifetime. Most forms of advertising are illegal in the UK, so the industry plays a clever game staying at the edge of the law, but in truth they are engaged in a fierce battle to capture the illegal teen market."
According to a survey of more than 10,000 adults in England, commissioned by Ash, six out of 10 parents want to ban tobacco marketing at festivals.
The battle to win young hearts and minds is also being waged in cyberspace. Research by an Australian academic, Becky Freeman, of Sydney University, published in the international journal Tobacco Control, found that employees of British American Tobacco (BAT) were using Facebook to promote Dunhill and Lucky Strike.
Freeman notes: "Some BAT employees are energetically promoting BAT and BAT brands on Facebook through joining and administrating groups, joining pages as fans and posting photographs of BAT events, products and promotional items." The employees are working in countries that have ratified bans on tobacco advertising, raising questions about whether their actions could be challenged in the courts.
Outside Europe, the promotion of cigarettes to young people is more blatant. The Camel brand has sponsored the Creamfields festival in Buenos Aires. In 2008, the Indonesian unit of Philip Morris International was forced to cancel its sponsorship of an Alicia Keys concert after complaints from anti-smoking campaigners and the singer herself. Last April, American Idol winner Kelly Clarkson came under fire after it emerged that her concert in Jakarta was sponsored by the cigarette brand LA Lights.
Meanwhile, it has emerged that UK tobacco firms are seeking to overturn new laws that ban cigarette vending machines from pubs and remove tobacco displays from shops and supermarkets, something that would have consequences for underage smokers, who frequently use vending machines to circumvent the law. The laws were passed by the previous government, but the regulations that would have implemented the changes have been blocked after a campaign from cigarette manufacturers which threatened to seek a judicial review.
The Department of Health has said that, given "the challenges facing business competition and costs", it would give further consideration to "the policy on display of tobacco products and sales from tobacco vending machines".
Research presented to parliament suggests that 17% of 11- to 15-year-olds who smoke regularly buy cigarettes from vending machines, while a study published in the Journal of Nicotine and Tobacco Research last year found that displays behind shop counters influence young smokers.
The article claimed the belief that "displays affect smoking initiation by children and may affect smoking behaviour of established smokers is supported by evidence, from reviews of internal documents, of the increasing importance attached to PoS [point of sale] by the tobacco industry and by the increasing tobacco industry resources expended on PoS marketing."

Source: The Observer, 18 July 2010
Link: http://bit.ly/cHckoA

Study: Point of Sale advertising major cause of teen smoking
A study to be published in the August issue of Pediatrics led by Lisa Henriksen, PhD, senior research scientist at the Stanford Prevention Research Center, reports that teens' exposure to cigarette advertising at retail outlets substantially increases the odds they will start smoking. According to the findings, students who visited these stores on a regular basis were at least twice as likely to try smoking as those who visited infrequently.

"The tobacco industry argues the purpose of advertising is to encourage smokers to switch brands, but this shows that advertising encourages teenagers to pick up a deadly habit," said Henriksen, who has studied tobacco marketing for more than a decade.

The study's publication comes just as the new federal Tobacco Regulation Law goes into effect, empowering the U.S. Food and Drug Administration to regulate the manufacturing, marketing and sale of tobacco products. As of June 22, tobacco companies are banned from using terms such as "light," "low" and "mild" on advertising and packaging and sponsoring cultural and sporting events, but regulators may impose additional constraints if warranted.

Point-of-sale is the major form of marketing used for tobacco, representing 90 percent of the industry's $12.5 billion marketing budget in 2006, and the study suggests that further limits on such activity could affect long-term smoking habits. The teen years are when the vast majority of smokers start, and if teens make it through to adulthood without smoking, their likelihood of ever becoming addicted is very small, Henriksen said.

In recent years, the decline in teenage smoking has leveled off. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, high-school students who reported current cigarette use declined sharply from a peak of 36.4 percent in 1997, to 21.9 percent in 2003, after which the percentage dropped just a little to 19.5 in 2009. "The huge decreases are really starting to slow," said Henriksen. "The train won't continue downhill without further action. Regulating retail marketing would be ideal for smoking prevention."

Henriksen based the study on repeat surveys of 11- to 14-year-olds at three middle schools in Tracy, Calif., and assessments of cigarette advertisements at stores near the schools. The survey included questions about students' smoking experience as well as how often they visited the types of stores with lots of cigarette adverts, convenience stores, gas stations, small groceries -- and then checked back later, first at one year and then at 30 months.

Of the 2,110 students surveyed in 2003 when the study began, 1,681 reported never smoking. A survey of these non-smoking students a year later revealed 18 percent of these students had smoked over the year, at least one puff, and that smoking initiation was much more prevalent among the students who had reported frequent visits to stores with the most cigarette ads.

Among those who had reported visiting these types of stores at least twice a week, 29 percent had taken at least one puff in the previous year. Among those who rarely visited -- less than twice a month -- only 9 percent had smoked at all.

A survey 30 months after the study began found that by then 27 percent had tried smoking: 34 percent of those who visited stores at least twice a week, and only 21 percent of those who rarely visited.

To measure exposure to ads, the researchers multiplied the frequency of visits by the number of advertising "impressions" in stores near the schools -- cigarette-branded ads, product displays and functional objects, like clocks, trash cans and register mats. On average, students experienced 325 cigarette-brand impressions per week, ranging from an average of 114 among infrequent shoppers to 633 among those who shopped frequently.

"I was surprised by the sheer number of cigarette brand impressions in signs and displays in convenience stores near schools," said Henriksen. "The exposure is unavoidable. It's impossible to miss."

Factors other than advertising influence smoking. To determine the effect of point-of-sale advertising alone, the researchers measured many other factors so they could hold these constant in the analysis. These other factors included risk-taking behaviour, unsupervised time after school, exposure to smoking in movies or on TV, and smoking by household members and friends. The researchers also factored in grades and demographics including gender, race and ethnicity.

When the project's statistician adjusted for all the variables, she found that the relationship between store visits and smoking initiation was strong. A year after the survey, those who had initially reported moderate visits (a frequency between once every two weeks and twice a week) were 64 percent more likely to have taken at least one puff than infrequent shoppers. Those frequent shoppers, who had reported more than two visits a week, were more than twice as likely. Even 30 months after the initial survey, by which time more students had begun smoking, the apparent influence of the store visits remained: Those who had initially reported moderate store visits were 19 percent more likely than infrequent visitors to have tried smoking; those who had reported frequent visits were 42 percent more likely to have had a puff.

How can simply spending time in the presence of advertisements make such an impact? "Young people are very susceptible to advertising messages," said Stanford adolescent medicine specialist Seth Ammerman, MD, who treats patients at Lucile Packard Children's Hospital and researches smoking cessation. Ammerman was not involved in the study.

"One particularly nefarious aspect of advertising at convenience stores is it really normalizes the product. What do you buy there? Cigarettes, but also soup, laundry detergent, soda, cat food -- normal, common things. So advertising there really gives the impression that smoking is normal," said Ammerman, a clinical professor of adolescent medicine at Stanford. "Tobacco companies understand this. They're not stupid."

Source: Psysorg, 18 July 2010