[Intl-tobacco] Ukraine: in the club with L&M

[Robert Weissman]

Ukraine: in the club with L&M
2002;11:89
by David Simpson
Source: Tobacco Control, 2002-05-29, via tobacco.org
URL: http://tc.bmjjournals.com/cgi/content/full/11/2/89

Keywords: news analysis

A frequent theme in tobacco advertising in the countries of Central
and Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union is to exploit the
fact, real or perceived, that people are now part of a wider
community of nations. "Test the West" was an early example from the
German firm Reemtsma: an invitation to try the "superior"
cigarettes that had been the exclusive preserve of western
Europeans but now, thanks to democratisation, were at last
available to all. Some promotions even gave citizens of the new
market economies a whole new pack of western cigarettes in exchange
for their old, state manufactured cigarettes. These were promptly
thrown in a bin to rub in the fact that their "quality" was so
inferior compared to the new brand that incineration, without
inhalation by their recent owner, was all they were fit for. 

A recent campaign for the Philip Morris (PM) brand L&M in the
Ukraine took a more passive line, but played up the new, much wider
personal horizons of Ukrainian citizens, extending way beyond the
old FSU, not just into western Europe, but right around what PM
undoubtedly would have referred to in the past as "the free world".
Under a caption proclaiming "Flavour that unites the world", the
ads invited potential L&M smokers to consider themselves linked
together, as if by membership of an exclusive club, with other
potential lung cancer and heart disease patients in cities such as
Stockholm, Bangkok, and Brasilia. Ironically, all those are capital
cities of countries with strong tobacco control laws, whose
citizens therefore are denied any link with the Ukrainian people's
opportunity to see absurd ads promoting a product likely to kill
about a half of those who use it throughout adult life. 

In times of optimism, family themes work well, too, as people feel
more confident about bringing new generations into the world, just
as tobacco companies feel more confident about recruiting them as
new customers. So it was that PM's Ukrainian advertisers ran a
picture of a happy couple who are clearly expecting a new addition
to the family. Above the slogan: "Connected to you – Luxembourg",
the man was not only connected to the woman by planting an intimate
caress, even a love-bite, on the cheek of his kittenish partner,
but also, by his right hand, to the unborn child in the woman's
abdomen. Neither model was visibly smoking, though strangely, the
man held his left hand in smoking posture and seemed to have
injured the index finger of his right hand, possibly from a
cigarette burn, or a prior bite that went astray. 

Visitors from The Netherlands were as shocked as Ukrainian health
advocates and telephoned PM's Dutch office when they got home,
asking whether the company encouraged smoking during pregnancy. The
local office immediately contacted PM's regional headquarters in
Lausanne, Switzerland. A leading Dutch newspaper ran the story,
which was duly picked up by radio stations, and back in the
Ukraine, local health advocates worked the press and broadcasting
media. Shortly afterwards, while refusing to return journalists'
telephone calls, PM replaced the images with other L&M ads without
pregnant models. 

In a sickening example of the international tobacco industry's
"We've changed!" image rehabilitation strategy, PM last year
deluged the Ukraine with "health education" leaflets warning
pregnant women against smoking. The appearance of the pregnant
woman billboards is just another instance of a perennial truth
about tobacco companies: however glossy the public relations
tricks, the ideals they try to persuade the world they have adopted
bear absolutely no resemblance to the activities of their marketing
departments, where it's business as usual. 

 
Ukrainian advertisement for the Philip Morris brand L&M, seemingly
encouraging smoking during pregnancy.