Tobacco advertising
Every morning, while most sensible people are still in bed, my colleague Torin Douglas is up and at it producing this very useful daily media briefing.
Today's post contained such as YouTube to sell their products, an accusation they deny. Having co-founded and published , a publication about creativity in advertising, I was intrigued.
Life for marketing bosses at cigarette manufacturers became much harder when the Tobacco Advertising and Promotion Act 2002 came into force in November 2002 in the UK, with most smoking advertising ending on 14 February 2003.
Until that time and for decades before, the tobacco industry had been responsible for producing some of the most memorable adverts ever produced.
From the Marlboro Man posters through to the hapless bald bloke in the Hamlet ads, the advertisements promoting tobacco often found their way beyond their target market and into the national consciousness.
There was a period, before the outright ban in 2002, when the rules for promoting smoking were tightened, stopping the advertiser from using the brand's name.
What followed was a series of posters for brands such as Benson & Hedges and Silk Cut that took poster advertising to a new artistic level. They were necessarily daring, brilliantly conceived, beautifully art directed and great to look at.
And as with all advertising, nobody had any idea whether or not they were successful (marketing boss: I know half my advertising works and the other half is a waste of money, I just don't know which is which).
It was the combination of the big money on offer from the tobacco companies and the censorship over using the brand's name that created the necessity that proved to be the mother of the ad agency's invention. And I imagine it is that same blend behind the current promotional activity undertaken to promote smoking.
as a means of reaching their target market. It also mentions the use of the internet as a recruitment tool.
Now I can see the logic in banning the promotion of a substance that can kill you, appeals to teenagers, is addictive, deemed anti-social and perceived to be corrupting.
But what strikes me odd about all this, is that ?
I would have thought the booze business fails on all the same points that led to the ban on tobacco advertising, while also succeeding in a similar way; by having made some very good ads.
An arts journal by 
Comment number 1.
At 26th Aug 2010, John_from_Hendon wrote:There is a very simple piece of legislation (which will never be enacted!) Simply this: that all chest, heart and cancer treatment is billed directly to the tobacco companies if their product is obtainable in the UK or if information about their product is available to be viewed in the UK. (Such charge being additional to corporation tax and also that such charge is not allowable as an expense in calculating corporation tax liability and further that such liability shall be calculated on the basis of global income.) A nice touch could be that these figures should be calculated globally so that the companies are dissuade from inflicting their product on emerging markets!
If the tobacco companies want to play games so can we.....
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Comment number 2.
At 26th Aug 2010, John_from_Hendon wrote:re #1 as an after thought....
Why not make all car companies pay the fines of motorists caught speeding - after all they sell the product that lets (even encourages) people to break the law! We need more imaginative justice!!!!
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Comment number 3.
At 27th Aug 2010, ian-russell wrote:As a non-smoker I got all the benefits of tobacco advertising without any of the ill-effects. I guess I was in the 50% of advertising that didn't work. I miss it. Brian Duffy's B&H photography was genius. Also the cinema adverts which were allowed to be a lot longer than the TV ones. Two that come immediately to mind are Spike Milligan's bullion heist for B&H (I think it might also have featured Peter Sellers, my memory's not so clear after all the booze), and the parody of the Zulu battle at Rorke's Drift. (Both available on youtube, I find, and, yes, it was Peter Sellers!)
Advertising seems to have gone to pot these days (no pun intended). I can't think of any outstanding works of art, just annoying and repetitious ads. I notice this is what they always got in the US and I expect it has a lot to do with having a broader range of channels.
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Comment number 4.
At 27th Aug 2010, Kit Green wrote:3. At 08:33am on 27 Aug 2010, ian-russell wrote:
Advertising seems to have gone to pot these days (no pun intended). I can't think of any outstanding works of art, just annoying and repetitious ads.
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As with the decline in all sorts of areas in the economy I believe that the blame is the rise of unimaginative clones from business management schools who rule the roost and believe that creativity is subservient to them. After all how does future creativity manifest itself on a balance sheet?
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