Did Joe Camel kill ad agency credibility?

Let's just say that one cannot see McCann- Erickson, for instance, picking up a tobacco account while it has to create public service ads for UNICEF.

This article was published in October 1997

THE PEOPLE VS ADVERTISING
The cigarette ads were not inherently offensive; there was something else at work. After almost a century of mistrust in advertising that was used to tout anything from dubious nostrums to products that just didn't deliver on their promise, this was payback time: the perfect case of 'The people versus Advertising'. Armed with some proof of the relationship between under-age smoking and advertising, Joe camel caught the flak in a twisted Disney-esque morality play: a cartoon character with a phallic nose, seducing kids. The drama is still being played out. Key whistle blower, Bennnet LeBow from a lesser known tobacco company called Ligget Group Inc, added intrigue and double-crossing to the plot line. (He turned in documents that proved the Tobacco companies actually marketed to kids, and that smoking did cause lung cancer). He was not the first to come out. Earlier a former tobacco company research scientist, Jeffrey Wigland, in an interview on national TV, admitted to the knowledge that two carcinogens had been added to cigarettes. Suddenly tobacco advertising became un-cool.

Even as this case unravels, the big question on everyone's mind is what exactly brought Big Tobacco to it's knees? Those monolithic companies with armies of lawyers (who only six months ago got TV stations to recant or pull stories on nicotine), were once thought untouchable. Like in most countries, Sri Lanka included, the huge taxes they pay to governments is often thought to buy their immunity. Some even use it as an argument why they are one of the most respectable businesses in the country. But not so in America, where nothing is sacrosanct; no-one is invincible (a president got impeached and Superman fell of his horse, remember?). Here board-room bickering, mergers, hostile take-overs, products that bomb and the private lives of CEOs, are no longer stories that can be buried in the business section; they are front page leads. Neither public relations nor campaign contributions can buy that degree of immunity.

GOING DOWN FIGHTING
In that sense, the tobacco industry saw it coming for a long time, and adopted a strategy that it would be better to go down fighting (meaning denying complicity in the some 400,000 tobacco-related deaths a year in the U.S.) than back down. Back down? Big Tobacco never backs down. In August last year, Philip Morris and R. J. Reynolds sued ABC News and won a $10b out-of-court libel settlement forcing the highly respected network to retreat with its tail between its legs. ABC did the unthinkable of even taking out full page ads in the national press saying 'WE APOLOGIZE". With rising hubris, four big tobacco companies then blocked an attempt by the state of Massachusetts to pass a law that required them to disclose the additives they used in cigarettes. I cannot see any other industry having the impunity to try such a thing. Their argument was that the additives they use were 'trade secrets' that give their products the distinctive flavour and aromas. It's as ridiculous as say, toothpaste manufacturers ganging together and refusing to disclose the abrasives and sugars they use, because it could make them less competitive. They tried other tactics. R. J. Reynolds ran advocacy ads that whined "today it's cigarettes. Tomorrow?" suggesting that alcohol, coffee, and hamburgers could be targeted next. Then in May, just few months before the settlement, R.J. Reynolds sued the Federal Trade Commission when it tried to ban the use of its Joe Camel character. It was a bad move, because it only hardened the resolve of the federal authorities who were, after all, championing a cause of the newly re-elected president. Two years ago, Clinton had inflicted the first real flesh would on Joe Camel, saying : "Let's stop pretending that a cartoon camel in a funny costume is trying to sell to adults." Philip Morris dodged that one hoping it would go away.

It didn't. There was a silly joke doing the rounds : When is a camel not a camel? Answer : When it is a scapegoat. Sometimes you cannot stop the ground swell of negative publicity. The sniper fire came from all directions, even while the big mortars were reloading. In a much forgotten lawsuit by a husband and wife from Kansas City, R.J. Reynolds and The American Tobacco Company were blamed for their products causing circulatory disease in David Burton, resulting in the amputation of both his legs. His claim was not different in tone : that tobacco companies knowingly marketed addictive products that they knew caused vascular disease. The federal judge ruled that R. J. Reynolds must provide the 33 documents that were part of a 1954 study conducted by The Council for Tobacco Research. Beginning as small rumbles, the anti-tobacco lobby grew as an un-orchestrated series of actions. A group of 63,000 flight attendants brought a $5b lawsuit against the tobacco industry blaming second-hand cabin smoke as the cause of lung cancer among flight attendants. Arizona Attorney General asked the state's largest pension fund to divest itself of $134 m in tobacco stocks, a mall shopper in Illinois assaulted a pregnant woman who was smoking, twisting her arm until she dropped the cigarette. The arm twisting sometimes came from other very surprising quarters. From a congregation of nuns in New York that pressurized the Sara Lee corporation to divest itself of its tobacco business, to the 3M Media company, one of the largest billboard companies in the US who stopped accepting outdoor tobacco-related ads. While all this was happening, 40 states were filing separate law suits against the tobacco industry claiming millions of dollars each for tobacco-related health care costs. Suddenly Big Tobacco, for all its money and legal clout began to feel the heat.

The time was right to cast aside the years of arrogance, and get to the negotiating table. Some people marvel at the amount of money being offered --$368.5 billion dollars. But many observers -- including the former FDA boss David Kessler, and the former Surgeon General, Everett Koop, are skeptical. They have reason to be. We're talking about one of the most profitable industries on this planet. Compared to other industries, the dollar value of the deal may seem like a huge sacrifice, but it's only a little dent in the kitty of the tobacco industry. That's why negotiators want to twist their arms a bit harder, before they seal the casket. One of the sticky clauses that is expected to be debated further is that the tobacco companies may not dispute the fact that their products kill their customers. That to me would be a product's supreme irony. From an advertising perspective, it would be one of the most embarrassing accounts on an ad agency's roster. Until now we could all plead ignorance. I too worked for an ad agency that handled a cigarette account, but ten years ago, I probably would have had to ask my copy chief (who smoked) the meaning of 'carcinogen'. I don't envy being in the shoes of a copywriter on a cigarette account today (unless the brief asked for a 'killer concept') having to invent compelling reasons why the product should be consumed. I'm certain that if old Leo Burnett were alive today he would have problems with relaunching the Marlboro Man he created. A secret document just released records that "the smoking patterns of teenagers are particularly important to Philip Morris." In the light of stuff like that, I cannot see McCann Erickson, Sri Lanka, for instance picking up a tobacco account while it has to create public service ads for UNICEF. It is predicted that the Tobacco companies' huge marketing budgets will move to Asia, where advertising is still not strictly regulated. U.S senator Ron Wyden has vowed that he would fight hard "to make sure that these multinational tobacco companies don't target kids in Bangladesh and Bangkok" in order to cover the billion dollar settlement in the U.S. Before they go anywhere, they will need to do a lot to erase the stigma. As part of the truce, Joe Camel and the Marlboro Man, two of the most durable icons of advertising, will be laid to rest, and the only people who will probably attend the funeral will be ad agencies who'll have to do some soul searching themselves.

In killing off its most powerful properties, the tobacco industry may attempt to survive this trauma. Too bad my late uncle, who used to smoke 32 cigarettes a day, didn't have that option.