[Intl-tobacco] South Africa: Circumventing ad bans

[Robert Weissman]

Circumventing ad bans
Financial Times

January 27, 2004

In South Africa BAT has a novel way of circumventing the ban on tobacco
advertising - it throws parties to boost its brands, reports the Financial
Times:

It's a beautiful summer's evening in Cape Town. Under the setting sun,
well-heeled twenty-somethings, tanned and clad in the latest fashions,
arrive in their flash cars for a house party in Llandudno, an exclusive
residential area in the South African city.

The gathering is a private party held by BAT, the tobacco company, which
has invited the smoking faithful together for the night. The company,
which has a virtual monopoly in the South African cigarette market, holds
similar parties over the Christmas period when people from all over the
country come to holiday in Cape Town.

South Africa imposed a ban on cigarette advertising, sponsorship and
promotion in April 2001, two years before the UK made the same move. Since
then, BAT has been focusing its activities on consent-based marketing
using its consumer database. "We're now channelling all of our energies to
one-on-one communications with consumers," says Simon
Millson, spokesman for BAT in South Africa.

The company employs consumer relationship "amplifiers" who chat to
existing users and work the clubs and beaches talking to more than 10
people a day. They drive around cities in Volkswagens carrying icons which
use the colours of cigarette logos. Using its database, BAT holds private
events for its different brand users.

The company stresses that it only communicates with existing cigarette
users aged over 18. They also say that while they hold about 95 per cent
of the South African market, their aim is to get users to switch to more
upmarket brands in order to improve their profit margins rather than
encourage non-smokers to take up the habit.