Cigarettes Will Kill You. Plain Packaging will Kill Cigarettes.

Posted Aug 25 in Opinion tagged , ,

Here’s a link to an article I wrote for The Drum on the impact of plain packaging of cigarettes.  It’s had over 300 comments – most from people with views very different to my own.  I find the topic endlessly fascinating, and have written about it previously for The Punch, here.

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  1. Bryan

    Sep 3rd, 2012

    Hi Fritz,

    A comment similar to this may have already been posted, I didn’t read through the multitude of comments this controversial topic has inspired. So if a I am repeating questions you have answered, apologies and perhaps you can simply direct me to the answers.

    Just for context purposes, I am not a smoker per se, but will have cigarettes occasionally when I drink. I think smoking an incredibly stupid habit, would love to see the world smoker-less and hope that plain packaging is the catalyst in achieving that goal. However, I am not convinced that it will be.

    I have no doubts that removing the branding and more importantly its imagery from cigarette packaging will decrease the favourability of the product as the ‘interesting research’ you referenced (Wakefield et al. 2008) in the article suggests. It’s fairly well established that advertising has an effect on peoples cognitive and affective judgements and the results of that research – perceptions of quality and satisfaction being reduced and the even the smokers of such cigarettes being rated as less stylish, social and mature by others – simply reinforces this fact.

    Yet are these results and their use in the argument for plain packaging really relevant? The study investigates the ratings on various factors of a cigarette (quality, satisfaction etc.) based purely on being exposed to its packaging. Rightly, the study measures the effect of the packaging on these rating by comparing the results of a group responding to a fully branded pack versus those responding to a plain back. I’m aware that this is the correct experimental design to isolate the variable, but in a post plain packaging world, there will be no fully branded packs to compare to, so doesn’t the plain pack just become the standard? As a result will people not just use other variables, like price as surrogate indicators of quality, satisfaction and so on?

    I understand that by the removal of branding and imagery of cigarette packaging it removes the brands ability to give the consumer a reason to buy B&H over Malboro for example, but I don’t see how it gives them a reason to not buy a cigarette at all? Won’t it simply remove the amount of comparative advantage a brand can build in the industry as opposed to removing the demand for the industry as a whole?

    Having said that, I also understand that smokers (respondents in the experiment above) aren’t really the target of this new law, it’s about stopping uptake of new smokers in teenagers, but I am still unconvinced as to plain packaging’s effectiveness on this group of people.

    For example, let’s say a group of 14 or 15 year olds are going through that initial phase of attending social gatherings, maybe in parks, malls, homes while parents are away – any scenario where teenagers typically start experimenting with cigarettes. While packaging may reduces the inference of quality the teenager gives the brand, is it really the reason why he/she is decided to smoke for the first time? I never smoked when I was younger, so I can’t give a personal account, but to use alcohol as an analogy (something I started doing in this phase of life), I think I started drinking because it was naughty, rebellious, because other kids our age were beginning to do it, and because kids in the year above that we looked up to were doing it and had started the year before when they were around our age. While undoubtedly advertising I’d seen contributed to my desire to drink in general, I truly think, at that point, it was a social response and that all the advertising really affected was my asking the person buying for it for me to get me “a hip flask of Jim Beam” as opposed to another brand.

    So if the core of the reason people pick up smoking is because of social (people around them) and psychological (inherent teenage desire to rebel) reasons, does that not also render the difference (or lack there of) in packaging of the cigarettes irrelevant in terms of uptake of the cigarette as a category?

    I personally believe that being one of those kids smoking first in a year group earns you some sort of social equity. Maybe not as much as it used to, but at the bare minimum you will be the topic of conversation in the school yard on Monday after lighting up at the park on a Saturday night. For arguments sake though, let’s say that whether its positive or negative, by smoking at a young age, others kids will perceive you with ‘Perception P’. Now, let’s say a group of kids share the purchase of a pack of cigarettes for the weekend (something I would say happens all the time). Only one of these kids will be holding the pack but I think it is fairly reasonable to think that each member of the smoking group will all be judged with Perception P, not just the one holding the pack, which seems to intuitively indicate that it is the smoking itself not the brand of cigarette fuelling those perceptions.

    So if kids are taking up cigarettes for social reasons, and the packaging has no major effect on how you are perceived by your peers, then I just don’t see how plain packaging will stop the uptake of cigarettes by teenagers either.

    Thoughts?

  2. Fritz Bachen

    Sep 20th, 2012

    Apologies for the delay in response, and for the brevity of it. I think all the actions togeher is ‘killing the cigarette brand. Cigarettes will always have natural appeal – but the appeal will be less without marketers being able to put their spin on top of an already addictive product. It’s already working as smoking rates are dropping.

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