A non-smoking marketer disagrees with cigarette plain packaging

with Duncan Watts - editor@thenewsport.com.au

I hate smoking and would never work for a tobacco company.

But I’ve kept a close watch on the cigarette plain packaging debate, and have finally arrived at a side of the argument I never thought I’d reside: that of the tobacco companies.

Despite being a health-conscious non-smoker, my professional marketer alter-ego has held sway. I just don’t think cigarette companies should be forced from their brands into generic packaging, mainly because it won’t work.

Here’s why:

1. Cool People
In my opinion, the government has overestimated how persuasive cigarette packaging alone is.  

Branded cigarette packets aren’t the problems; cool people are doing the selling for cigarette companies.

We should just ban cool people – with their tight jeans, perfect hair and gravity-defying cigarettes hanging from their bottom lip – from smoking in public. Parents too - if you have kids, you can’t smoke any more.

Lesson for us: target cool/influential people to use your product. Others will follow, even if they’re likely to suffer from using it.

2. Consumers shouldn’t be underestimated
These days, taking up smoking in the first place is plainly stupid.

But does the government think that having mentally negotiated the risks of mouth cancer, throat cancer, lung cancer, bad teeth, yellow skin, heart disease and bad breath, current and potential smokers care what the packets look like?

If you can find the logic in smoking, despite all the health warnings, you obviously have some wits about you and will no doubt be able to select a brand, even when they’re all the same colour.

Lesson for us: Don’t underestimate the consumer. Purchasing decisions are rarely based on one element, and usually involve some sort of emotion. Your shiny new brochure is great, but it alone won’t bring customers to the door. Price, quality, referrals, existing relationships and target market needs also come into play.

3. Free Will
Aside from an unexpected regime change, there will always be free will for consumers.

Smokers and silly, young people will want to smoke cigarettes just as fat people will want to eat chocolate – regardless of packaging.

Lesson for us: It’s worth remembering that while your shiny new brochure and other marketing activities help attract clients, ultimately they choose you out of free will. Respect that choice by thanking them for it.

4. Stop it, you’re scaring us…
You may have already heard the ‘slippery slope’ argument. Tobacco companies and other companies, like junk food producers, argue that cigarette plain packaging laws could eventually extend to junk food packaging and anything deemed dangerous by the government of the time.

By this logic, the supermarket confectionary aisle could get a lot more confusing, V8 cars could become more boring to look at, and marketers would ultimately have less to do.

Lesson for us: There isn’t one. I’m just standing my ground as a marketer.

In summary, the cigarette plain packaging legislation ignores the power of referrals (i.e. the cool smokers), assumes consumers are idiots and completely disregards free will in the consumer decision-making process, however misguided the initial decision to purchase cigarettes is.

The lessons for us:
1. Referrals are cheap. Recruit cool people as brand advocates.
2. Don’t underestimate your customers. Think about their decision-making process and appeal to it.
3. Respect the fact that your customers selected you out of their own free will. Thank them for it.