Cowboys, Camels, and Kids

Does advertising turn people into smokers?

Jacob Sullum from the April 1998 issue

(Page 2 of 4)

But recognizing Joe Camel is not tantamount to smoking, any more than recognizing the logos for Ford and Chevrolet (which most of the kids also did) is tantamount to driving. The researchers seemed to assume that familiarity breeds affection, but that is not necessarily the case. A subsequent study, funded by R.J. Reynolds and published in the Fall 1995 Journal of Marketing, confirmed that recognition of Joe Camel rises with age and that most 6-year-olds correctly associate him with cigarettes. Yet 85 percent of the kids in this study had a negative attitude toward cigarettes, and the dislike rose with both age and recognition ability. Among the 6-year-olds, less than 4 percent expressed a positive attitude toward cigarettes.

Animal Magnetism

In the second JAMA study, Joseph R. DiFranza, a researcher at the University of Massachusetts Medical School, led a team that showed Joe Camel ads to samples of high school students and adults. They found that the teenagers were more likely to recognize Joe Camel, to recall the ads, and to evaluate them positively than the adults, whose average age was about 40. Since R.J. Reynolds contended that the Joe Camel campaign was aimed at young adults, these results were hardly surprising. Based on such comparisons, it is impossible to distinguish between an ad aimed at 16-year-olds and an ad aimed at 18-year-olds (or 21-year-olds).

DiFranza et al.'s most striking claim was that the Joe Camel campaign had caused a huge shift in brand preferences. Using data from seven surveys conducted in three states between 1976 and 1988, they estimated that 0.5 percent of underage smokers preferred Camels before the campaign began. By comparison, 33 percent of the teenage smokers in their study, conducted during 1990 and 1991, said they smoked Camels--a 66-fold increase. "Our data demonstrate that in just 3 years Camel's Old Joe cartoon character had an astounding influence on children's smoking behavior," the researchers wrote. But the pre-1989 surveys and the JAMA study were not comparable, and neither used random samples of the national population, so it's doubtful that the results are representative of American teenagers in general. Data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's Teenage Attitudes and Practices Survey, which does use a nationwide sample, suggest a much less dramatic (though still sizable) shift toward Camels. In 1993, 13.3 percent of the TAPS respondents said they usually bought Camels, compared to 8.1 percent in 1989.

The third JAMA article presented data from a 1990 California telephone survey. The researchers, led by John P. Pierce, head of the University of California at San Diego's Cancer Prevention and Control Program, reported that teenagers were more likely than adults to identify Marlboro or Camel as the most advertised brand. The survey also found that Marlboro's market share increased with age until 24, when it started to decline gradually. Camel, on the other hand, was considerably more popular among teenagers than among young adults. Comparing the California data to the results of a national survey conducted in 1986, Pierce et al. concluded that the market shares for both Marlboro and Camel had increased among adults (the 1986 survey did not include minors). Camel's increase was bigger, particularly among adults under the age of 30 (i.e., the segment R.J. Reynolds claimed to be targeting).

Taken together, these studies suggested that 1) most children know Joe Camel has something to do with cigarettes and 2) the Joe Camel campaign helped increase the brand's market share, especially among young smokers. Since most smokers pick up the habit before they turn 18, it seems likely that the tobacco companies would take an interest in the brand choices of teenagers, and that inference is supported by internal documents. In 1974, for example, Philip Morris hired the Roper Organization to interview young smokers about their brand choices, and more than a third of the 1,879 respondents were described as 18 or younger. "To ensure increased and longer-term growth for Camel filter," said a 1975 RJR memo, "the brand must increase its share penetration among the 14-24 age group, which have a new set of more liberal values and which represent tomorrow's cigarette business." Last year, as part of an agreement settling state lawsuits, the Liggett Group said tobacco companies have deliberately targeted underage smokers.

The other companies continued to deny that charge. R.J. Reynolds maintained that Joe Camel was aimed at 18-to-24-year-olds, although the company had no way of assuring that he would not also appeal to people younger than 18. In response, David Kessler told ABC's Peter Jennings, "Tell me how you design an advertising campaign that affects only 18-year-olds." Which is sort of the point. If cigarette companies have to avoid any ad that might catch the eye or tickle the fancy of a 16-year-old, they might as well not advertise at all (which would suit Kessler fine). In any case, the important question is whether advertising encourages teenagers to smoke, not whether it steers them toward Camels instead of Marlboros.

In each of the Joe Camel studies, the researchers' conclusions (and the subsequent press coverage) went beyond what the data indicated. Fischer et al., whose comparison between Joe Camel and Mickey Mouse got the most attention, were relatively cautious: "Given the serious health consequences of smoking, the exposure of children to environmental tobacco advertising may represent an important health risk and should be studied further." DiFranza et al. said, "A total ban of tobacco advertising and promotions, as part of an effort to protect children from the dangers of tobacco, can be based on sound scientific reasoning." Pierce et al. flatly concluded that "[c]igarette advertising encourages youth to smoke and should be banned." These are all statements of opinion that have little to do with what the studies actually showed.

Information that came to light in a lawsuit challenging the Joe Camel campaign (a case that R.J. Reynolds settled for $10 million in September) suggests that at least some of the researchers may have prejudged the issue. In a letter he wrote to a co-author before the research began, DiFranza complained that he had not been able to give reporters "proof that the tobacco companies are advertising to children. I can't point to any one piece of evidence as a smoking gun and say `here, this proves it.' Well I have an idea for a project that will give us a couple of smoking guns to bring to the national media." He explained, "I am proposing a quick and easy project that should produce...evidence that RJR is going after kids with their Camel ads." Toward the end of the letter, he said, "There, the paper is all ready, now all we need is some data."

Switching Arguments

Neither DiFranza's "smoking gun" nor the other studies provided any evidence about the impact of advertising on a teenager's propensity to smoke, which is the crux of the issue. When critics complain that advertising encourages people to smoke, the tobacco companies reply that it encourages smokers to buy particular brands. Strictly speaking, these claims are not mutually exclusive. In principle, advertising can promote an industry's overall sales as well as drum up business for a specific company. An ad for a Compaq portable computer might encourage people to buy a Compaq (the company certainly hopes so), or it might get them thinking about laptops generally. But the tobacco companies argue that the U.S. market for cigarettes is mature, meaning that the product is universally familiar, like toothpaste or deodorant, and attempts to boost overall consumption are no longer cost-effective. Indeed, with smoking rates declining, the tobacco companies are fighting for pieces of a shrinking pie. Tobacco's opponents say this trend makes cigarette manufacturers all the more desperate to maintain their profits; they need advertising like the Joe Camel campaign to attract replacements for smokers who quit or die.

Advocates of an advertising ban contend that brand competition does not adequately explain the industry's spending on advertising and promotion, which totals about $5 billion a year. In 1995, the most recent year for which the Federal Trade Commission has reported figures, coupons, customer premiums (lighters, key chains, clothing, etc.), and allowances to distributors accounted for about 80 percent of this money. Cigarette companies spent about $900 million on newspaper, magazine, outdoor, transit, direct-mail, and point-of-sale advertising.

According to a widely cited article published in the Winter 1987 Journal of Public Health Policy, "A simple calculation shows that brand-switching, alone, could never justify the enormous advertising and promotional expenditures of the tobacco companies." Anti-smoking activist Joe B. Tye and his co-authors started with an estimate, based on marketing research, that about 10 percent of smokers switch brands each year. Then they calculated that the industry's spending on advertising and promotion in 1983 amounted to nearly as much per switcher as a typical smoker would have spent on cigarettes that year. They also noted that, since each cigarette maker produces various brands, smokers who switch are not necessarily taking their business to another company.

"Thus," the authors concluded, "advertising and promotion can be considered economically rational only if they perform a defensive function--retaining company brand loyalty that would otherwise be lost to competitors who promote their products--of if they attract new entrants to the smoking marketplace, or discourage smokers from quitting." If defending market share were the only aim, Tye et al. added, the tobacco companies should support a ban on advertising and promotion, which would eliminate the threat from competitors. On the other hand, "If advertising and promotion increase cigarette consumption, then less than two million new or retained smokers--5.5 percent of smokers who start each year or try to quit (most failing)--alone would justify the annual promotional expenditure."

There are several flaws in this argument. To begin with, the estimate for the number of brand switchers does not include people who usually smoke, say, Benson & Hedges but occasionally smoke Camels. Based on its own marketing surveys, R.J. Reynolds reports that about 70 percent of smokers have a second-choice brand that they smoke now and then. About 25 percent regularly buy more than one brand each month. Even smokers who don't have a second favorite sometimes try other brands because of coupons, premiums, and promotional offers.