Smoking Ads: Four Major Tricks

Targeting

Cigarette advertisers create their ads to appeal to specific groups. A target group represents a "market segment" -- in other words, a group of people who are most likely to buy whatever it is that the advertiser wants to sell.

Target groups can be made up of people who are about the same age, such as young women, older women, teens, children, older men, and young men. Target groups can also be made up of people of the same linguistic, racial or ethnic group. It all depends on the product that's being sold and who it's being sold to.

According to a fact sheet put out by the American group Women and Girls

Against Tobacco, we should not "be fooled when tobacco companies say they

don't target teens. One issue of People magazine with a cover story on 'Teens and Sex' ran 13 tobacco ads, including an eight-page Old Joe Camel spread. Typically People magazine will run two to five tobacco ads per issue." ... But how do you reach your target?

Advertisers who target young women and teens place their ads where teens are likely to see them. This is called "reach." To reach young women, for example, you could place your ad on the back cover or inside front cover of a teen magazine, on a rock video TV program, or on a billboard that students will see when they travel on the bus to school. Sometimes, by placing an ad near something else, the advertiser is more likely to reach

its target group. This often happens in magazines, where an advertiser looks for stories that are related to the product they're selling or what they're saying in their ad. For example, an ad for a new type of jeans will-run on the same page as a story about fashion, Sometimes the ads affect the articles that magazines choose to run. For example, studies show that the more magazines accept money from cigarette advertisers, the less likely they are to do stories about the dangers of smoking. 1

A November 1993 article in an American glamour magazine, which accepts between six and eight tobacco ads for every issue, listed 20 "little changes" that young women could make to have a healthier life. The list included taking care of your feet; using a fluoride toothpaste and eating breakfast. But, it didn't mention not smoking. Smoking is a leading cause of death and the #1 cause of many cancers and heart disease.

These are the devices or techniques that advertisers use to appeal to the target audience. Hooks for teens and young women can include: using popular singers, actors or athletes as spokespersons; featuring "cute" animals in ads; playing tricks with you to get you to notice an ad such as by using a hologram; or, implying that you will get something you really want if you buy or use their product, like:

The message is what the ad is really saying, in words and in pictures. Some of the cigarette advertisers' messages are:

• smoking can help you control your weight (super-slim models, super-slim names such as Virginia Slims, DuMaurier Lights)

• smoking is clean (models in pure white bathrooms, people in natural, clean environments such as mountain-tops and lakesides)

• women who smoke are modem, strong-willed individuals (you've come a long way, baby)

• smoking is exotic and romantic (models photographed through filters, in exotic settings)

• smoking makes you attractive to guys (models looking ecstatic with one or more gorgeous men)

How often you see an ad is a good way of telling how hard the advertiser is trying to get you to buy their product.

The number of times an ad appears in your favourite magazine or on your favourite TV shows; how many times you see the same billboard ad on your way to school in the bus this is called "frequency" in the ad biz. It's a well known fact that the more often you see a brand name, the more likely you are to eventually buy it. So, advertisers pay more for more "frequency."

SOURCE: Health Canada, Back Talk Media Wise Facilitators Guide, 1996