The impact of tobacco advertising on the females - Essay Example

? Visual Arts and Film Studies Introduction Tobacco companies are targeting women and other special populations with advertising. Female smoking increased in United States when cigarette marketing targeted women in late 1960s and earlier in 1930s. This advertising was aiming to elicit an emotional response from the audiences. The consumers felt that they are buying their self-image when purchasing cigarettes. For marketers to sell the images, they need to determine what images will promote the desired self-enhancement and consumers interpersonal concerns. Promotion of tobacco products are in two perspectives; growing argument for its regulation as part of global tobacco control efforts and its economic importance to the tobacco industry. Tobacco Company has put an effort to build strong brands with an identity, an execution aimed consistently over time at a well-defined target audience and, a market position (Rawlinson, 2009). Tobacco advertising and promotion have been effective in the view of both advertising industry and consumers. The study of Koponen showed that the purchasing behaviours correlated with scores on the standardised personality inventories. Positioning is the place a product, group of products, or a brand occupies in the mind of consumer in relation to competing offerings. The position of various cigarette brands in the target of appealing to women consumers was based on demographics (Ciarlo, 2011). This can be easily illustrated with concrete examples from the advertising world. Tobacco marketing aimed at women in relation to gender dates back to 1940s when women were urged to play directly to concerns about body weight. Recently, Virginia Slims and Eve exemplified that United States cigarette brands promoted as feminine and explicitly targeted towards women. The researchers have noted out the emotional and psychological needs of female smokers and advertisements that appeal to such needs. Smoking initiation by young women and adolescent girls associated to smoking with slimness. Product consumption tends to fluctuate in every month and cigarettes are not an exception. In United States, cigarettes sales are at peak during summer months from June to August. The time structure for adults and youth smokers is less due to higher instance of cigarette consumption during the summer than other climates. This warmer weather will likely to prompt smokers to go outside frequently to other areas if indoor smoking laws are tight. Sex appeal, independence, fashionableness, adventure, and affluence are identified as themes found in female-targeted cigarette advertising. The advertisement of cigarettes smoked by women only gave women a sense of liberation, exclusivity, and equality. In late 1960s, initial advertising campaigns of Virginia Slim included claims that there is a cigarette for women only. This is the slim cigarette made just for only women, who is tailored slim than the fat cigarettes smoked by men. In 1969, John Landry argued that early ideas if a thin cigarette did not gain positive response as per market respondents. It rather worked well when they added the idea of female orientation. In the analysis of competition on female oriented cigarette, advertising hit the market in 1968, just as the women liberation was entering the national consciousness (Barnard, 1998). The positioning cigarettes specifically for today have liberated women who have unique swing image. It has been documented that tobacco advertising is targeting women, but less has been discovered how the needs satisfaction messages effectively promote smoking to women. The documents from the tobacco industry provided an opportunity on examining the industry’s process of developing cigarette advertising for women. The industry identified this in a research in 1980 as a salient to women of life experiences and different ages. Marketing of Satin was tested to compete in the growing market of educated and working women who smoked slim cigarette. The response to this brand of cigarette received a very positive response. Satin was positioned in that it could communicate to homemakers and working people that they need time for themselves to relax and foster themselves by smoking satin cigarettes. The women were also, sharing the need for escapism, private, and self indulgence (Burns, 2010). According to research conducted by Lorillard in 1981, test market respondents on satin appealed to desire to relax with a cigarette, desire to pamper individual, sensuous nature of a woman, and suppressed dream of relaxing in luxury. It was also noted that, advertisements which involves women in fantasy of escape from life’s problems with a little self indulgence which seem to be striking a nerve. This is most dangerous with focus groups especially with older women. In United States, adolescence is the period promotions can be directed to youth both men and women for smoking. In United States, less than 10% of smokers switch brands yearly with less than 8% switching companies. Tobacco industry has declined that they market their products to women, although internal documents indicate otherwise (Mirzoeff, 1999). Several investigators who examined Tobacco Industry obtained that women are targeted by the tobacco industry marketing activities. Through a group test on prototype advertising in 1981, it was focused that Couch Ad had the best overall involvement and acceptance. It was sensuous, self indulgent and luxurious, and it went well with Satin. Those rendering depicted solitary women and young women lounging on a couch, reading magazines, and smoking cigarettes. The participants accepted the headline “Spoil Yourself with Satin” without any hesitation, and many other deserve time for themselves to relax by taking a break after kids are a sleep. Satin marketing strategy convince women that only satin can pamper and gratify them special feminine moods and needs when it comes to smoking enjoyment. The advertisements communicated the message in an emotional level of contemplation, vignettes of relaxation, and self-indulgence. Women, who participated in focus groups perceived the ideal to, enjoy family; enjoy working but not overly independent to the point of being tough, isolated, and domineering. According to research conducted it reveal that adventure, risk, redemption, relaxation, and romance are common topics related with cigarette advertising. Tobacco companies and the market research firms extensively study the personality characteristics of smokers. The characteristics identified include; social strivers, pleasure seekers satisfied secure unsettled dreamers, and refined women. Although Satin was off to a strong start and still manufactured, it was not a commercial success in the market. Between test marketing and national launch, Satin claimed a 1.4% market share 1983, which later dropped to 0.24% in 1984 due to failure to sustain (Darley, 2000). As tobacco control advocates pressed for legislative and societal priority with respect to second hand smoke, the social acceptability of smoking declined considerably. (Darley, 2000). The two campaigns were designed to address social acceptability issues of people who like to smoke. After it fails to increase the market share, they tried to address the social acceptability with the creative solutions campaign, which was also a failure before they abandon the endeavour. A 1985 marketing research stated that neither health issues nor taste motivated smokers. Promotional planning involves establishing advertising objectives and determining the target audience. There are several ways to communicate with consumers, including event sponsorship, advertising, packaging, personal selling, publicity, celebrity, and contest. Communicating brand image is particularly crucial for product categories such as beer and cigarette. Such characteristics are the basis for these goods sometimes being coined badge products. Brands are expressions of success, femininity, rebellion, and sophistication (Odih, 2010). Researchers who examined primarily accessible documents of the tobacco industry concluded that women are the targeted consumers. Geographic advertising plays a role in the development of advertising strategies and media as most of its national brands dominate the United States marketplace. The brands are sold in national basis by using national media. Regional variations in cigarette brands success are not pronounced in United States relative to other markets such as Australia and Canada (Barnard, 1998). In a review of documents conducted, it indicates that Australian cigarette market is decidedly regionalized. Researchers have called to the importance of youth and women as the main targets in marketing strategies of tobacco industries. This came in after the researchers proved that the youths are the most targeted in the market. In addition, at this stage many are influenced by their peer groups that they fall in to the trap easily. Age has become the key setting for tobacco industries because advertising restrictions have been increased and should be licensed (Rawlinson, 2009).Promotions are targeting consumer groups like gender, ethnicity, income, age, and religion, place of residence, interests, values, lifestyles and occupation. The objective to this is to meet the needs of a group of consumers in an efficient manner. The characteristics of the products and promoted attributes can clearly match what the user’s desire. Conclusion The current state of knowledge of women cigarette advertising is extended by revealing industry’s intentions of identifying to the psychosocial needs of subgroups of women. Other attempts to sell cigarettes on the principle of satisfying women psychosocial needs are misleading. An attempt to satisfy the real psychosocial need with the counterfeit solution of smoking cigarettes fails to address the needs in a meaningful way and introduces damaging addiction. The older women are smoking as a means of escaping life demands will burden themselves with the additional demand of addiction. All of the accumulated associations and images of the communications strategy build the brand’s image slowly and collectively (Schwartz & Przyblyski, 2004). The strategies include sophistication, social status, healthfulness, glamour, femininity, adventure, and rewarded risk-taking. The strategies are most likely not limited to women market only. Common market segmentation dimensions include demographics, behavioural characteristics, geography, and psychographics. Internal tobacco company documents reveal that two key typologies of cigarette consumers used by cigarette are pre-quitters and starters. The brand image of most tobacco products represents the result of a multifaceted marketing effort involving brand identity, pictorial elements, use of color, and taglines and slogans. The development, reinforcement, and enhancement of the brand imagery is the primary objective of tobacco promotion. The honours speak to the pervasiveness of tobacco advertising as well as the strength of cigarette brand imagery. Despite growing awareness, the value of tobacco trademarks has been quite durable. Health consequences of cigarette use are increasingly stringent regulatory environment and ongoing litigation against the industry. When women realised that they had smoked more than men, they became guilt and made some efforts to reduce the habit of smoking. Also, there advertisements about how cigarettes affects the health of individuals. This was featured mostly because it affected all men, women and youth. An alert was introduced to the publicregarding the consequences of cigarette smoking to pregnant women. Evidence of the industry’s efforts to target other special populations suggested that these strategies are commonly used. These other populations targeted are; bisexual, lesbians, transgender community, young African American adult smokers, youth, and Asian Americans (Walker & Chaplin, 1997). The discussion has shown that advertising strategies present a challenge to tobacco control. Total bans on all forms of cigarette promotions and advertising has resulted to a great success. For example, smoking rates in Australia dropped from 22% to 19.5% three years later after tobacco advertising were completely banned in 1998. In addition, the number of smokers did not increase in the period of the ban. References Barnard, M. (1998). Art, Design and Visual Culture: An Introduction. Derby. Palgrave Macmillan. Burns, P. M. (2010). Tourism and Visual Culture, Volume 2: Methods and Cases. United Kingdom. CABI. Ciarlo, D. (2011). Advertising Empire: Race and Visual Culture in Imperial Germany. Germany. Harvard University Press. Darley, A. (2000). Visual Digital Culture. London. Routledge. Mirzoeff, N. (1999) An Introduction to Visual Culture. Illustrated, reprint. New York. Routledge. Odih, P. (2010) Advertising and Cultural Politics in Global Times. United Kingdom. Ashgate Publishing, Ltd., 2010 Rawlinson, M. (2009) American Visual Culture. America. Berg. Schwartz, V. R. & Przyblyski J. M. (2004) 19th Century Visual Culture Reader. United States. Routledge. Walker, J. A. & Chaplin S. (1997) Visual Culture: An Introduction. 5th ed. United Kingdom. Manchester University Press. Read More