Plain packaging for tobacco: wine branding down the gurgler?

by David Stewart ON 8 May 2013

The Australian community is becoming increasingly aware – through government-funded education, mass media and social media – of how the over-consumption of alcohol and fast food impacts on human health. These industries should be wary of government lobbying from the health industry to propagate legislation similar to the Tobacco Plain Packaging Act, with a warning shot across the bows being draft legislation introduced into the New South Wales State Parliament late in 2012 intended to minimise the advertising of alcohol products.

As the draft legislation has been proposed by an independent as a private members bill, it seems unlikely it will obtain support from one of the major parties. But as this legislation would have an acute impact on the wine sector, as well as the increasingly strong ‘craft beer’ sector, these industries will be well served by proactively mitigating the likelihood of potential legislative battles occurring.

Attractive wine labels, going beyond information about the variety or the producer, are used to entice unsophisticated or new consumers. This is one of the primary methods by which the wine sector sells its products in a highly-competitive domestic and export market.

Research suggests many consumers believe wine label art is reflective of the quality of the wine inside the bottle and, as a consequence, marketing and merchandising play a role equal in importance to the manufacturing process.

By reason of the community’s understanding of the dangers of smoking, media coverage of the 2012 challenge to the Constitutional validity of the Tobacco Plain Packaging Act in the High Court of Australia was largely sympathetic to the Federal Government and commentators tended to agree with the Court’s decision. The most high profile of all of the observers, the World Health Organisation, openly welcomed the decision and called on the rest of the world to follow Australia’s tough stance on tobacco marketing.
The Court found in a six-to-one decision this was ‘no acquisition of intellectual property rights’ – specifically, trademark rights – by the Government. Registered trademarks protect the value of brands. By highly regulating their use to the point of non-use, the collective value of those brands is decimated within Australia.
The High Court decision is a precedent which would permit similar regulation to the Act in other industry sectors. Information about wines is already subject to regulation in Australia, and severe sales regulation in countries such as Canada and Sweden, but all of this existing regulation does not significantly affect the creative expression of the brand.

Simply put, wine companies would not sell as much product if it was compelled to be sold in olive labels with plain font describing the makers’ name, the brand name, wine variety and other details.

The enormous problems faced by the tobacco industry in coping with plain packaging would be a very significant burden upon the much more fragmented alcohol industry, which has many small participants unable to afford neither a legal challenge nor a strict compliance program. Wine, beer and spirits makers need to be prepared to address this potential regulatory risk to their marketing strategies.

However, while there is some concern in the food manufacturing and alcohol industries about the implications for consumer products which have adverse health-related side effects, potential government intervention in the marketing of other products where there are health-related concerns is a slippery slope argument: there is no logical inevitability alcohol and food will be impacted on by the plain packaging legislation.

Additionally, because of the obvious health issues associated with tobacco, there was a notable absence of assistance to the tobacco industry by the alcohol and food industries to fight the case against plain packaging. This was possibly because of fear of consumers’ reactions to any alignment of interest with the tobacco industry over a health-driven law. Equally, politicians will be well aware of the non-alignment positioning with tobacco the fast food and alcohol industries have taken.

Finally, the Federal Attorney General has issued a statement the Federal Government will not be pursuing plain packaging legislation for the alcohol or snack food industries. The longevity of this policy remains to be seen.

‘Fishing bum’ cigarette box wraps foil plain packaging laws

by Marketing ON 12 December 2012

A Gold Coast company is attempting to foil tobacco plain packaging laws by creating wrap around stickers for cigarette packs.

Box Wrap, a sticker manufacturing company, created the workaround for smokers who dislike the mandatory olive green packaging and gruesome health warnings, which came into effect on cigarette packs on 1 December.

“People feel they have had their choice ripped off them. We are just a sticker company that is no different from a cigarette case,” says the company’s managing director Anthony Do Rozario.

Promoted with the slogan ‘It’s your box, it’s your choice’, the stickers allow smokers to cover up the plain packaging with a range of skins, including the Australian flag and an image of the backside of a scantily clad woman holding a fishing rod. (“Everything from fishing bums to Aussie flags,” Do Rozario says.)

Box Wrap will launch a website and social media campaign for the stickers today, according to the Gold Coast Bulletin. They will initially be sold online for $8.75 for packs of six, with hopes of making them available alongside cigarettes in retail outlets.

The company has filed for a worldwide patent for the stickers, as other countries consider introducing similar laws.

The Federal Government’s Department of Health and Ageing is yet to respond to questions over the legality of the stickers, but will certainly by looking at them closely.

No more cigarette advertising? Never mind, there’s an app for that

by Marketing ON 6 November 2012

By Becky Freeman, Lyndal Trevena and Nasser Dhim, University of Sydney.

“Every time a door closes a window opens.” This clichéd greeting card sentiment must be the catch-cry of tobacco marketers globally. Ever since tobacco advertising was first forced off our television screens in the 1970s, the tobacco industry has been at pains to splash its logos and brands just about anywhere it can.

Public health officials and governments have never been able to keep up with determined and inspired cigarette advertising executives.

No more roadside billboards? No worries – we’ll make our shop displays even bigger and more exciting! No more magazine ads? We’ll sponsor sport and music festivals instead! No vouchers, prizes, giveaways, contests, or freebies? Ok, we’ll buy a starring role for our cigarettes in movies!

It’s not surprising then that tobacco product promotions have wormed their way on to our mobile phones through app stores. With Smartphone sales and mobile Internet use skyrocketing globally, it just makes good business sense to take advantage of this highly unregulated medium.

Devotees of the most popular cigarette brand in the world, Marlboro, for example, can pay just 99 cents to decorate their phones with the infamous red chevron.

While it could be completely feasible that the Marlboro global brand owner, Philip Morris International, is not at all connected with this app, they do not appear to have taken any steps to prevent app developers from abusing their trademark. Given how forcibly Philip Morris defended its trademark rights in the Australian High court over plain packaging this seems strangely inconsistent.

Tobacco industry defenders will undoubtedly contest that any move to regulate content on app stores is tantamount to gagging the most vulnerable citizens who dare to defy the powerful nanny state. When the simple truth is, tobacco advertising laws must be adapted to keep up with new media.

Distinguishing commercial speech, bought and paid for by the tobacco industry, from the private voices of citizens who favour smoking is a cornerstone of all tobacco advertising laws. There is no suggestion that anyone be prevented from distributing pro-smoking content online, or through app stores, that is not sourced from the deep marketing budgets of the tobacco industry.

Many countries which have enacted tobacco advertising bans state that they also include all forms of Internet-based advertising. But, there is very little evidence on whether or how well these sorts of provisions are actually being enforced. Australia’s recently enacted ban of online tobacco advertising has yet to be tested.

Intriguingly, plain packaging may prove be the most viable solution to the end of tobacco industry efforts to continue to find loopholes in advertising legislation. If consumers are no longer familiarised with iconic brand imagery through cigarette packages, then apps like the one above lose all their meaning.

All too often we read news stories of the Internet, and social media in particular, of being the source of all evil in today’s society. Facebook has been blamed for everything from causing asthma attacks to breaking up happy marriages. However dismissing this issue as yet another case of a hysterical reaction to new technology would be to accept the tobacco industry refrain that it is a legal industry like any other. There is no other industry that kills half of its best customers.

Indeed, app stores can also be a fantastic resource for health promoting activities. But for every positive app such as RunKeeper there is a 101 Drinking Games, self-described as the ‘#1 Drinking Game app! To help you get smashed!!!’

Research on Internet content regulation has failed to address the global nature of the online world, so international collaboration on Internet regulation is imperative. The World Health Organization Framework Convention on Tobacco Control is an ideal mechanism to exchange analysis and information on emerging technologies and best practices for online tobacco advertising bans.

This article was originally published at The Conversation.
Read the original article.

Health Minister: last-ditch cigarette marketing ploy a “sick joke”

by Marketing ON 12 September 2012

Health Minister Tanya Plibersek has called a last ditch marketing tilt from Imperial Tobacco, which carries the tag line ‘It’s what’s on the inside that counts’ on packaging of its cigarettes, the “ultimate sick joke”.

The campaign seeks to downplay the impact of plain packaging legislation, set to come into effect on 1 December, by telling smokers that the product is still the same and showing the drab brown packaging peeled back to reveal the current branded packaging.

In a statement, Plibersek compared the campaign’s message to what goes on inside the bodies of smokers – diseased lungs, hearts and arteries. “For a company to have produced packs that contain the line, ‘It’s what’s on the inside that counts’, must surely be the ultimate sick joke from Big Tobacco,” she said.

“Smoking related diseases kill 15,000 Australians a year and the Government is determined to reduce the pain and suffering caused by this deadly product.”

A statement from Imperial Tobacco said the interim packets before the plain packaging becomes mandatory in December was to advise “adult smokers” of Peter Stuyvesants brand cigaretts that the brand will soon change colour.

“Essentially, this is a mechanism to provide factual information about upcoming legislative changes to adult consumers of the Peter Stuyvesant brand of cigarettes,” a spokeswoman says. “It is also important to inform our adult consumers that the product itself will remain unchanged.”

Plain packaging will start to arrive in stores from 1 October 2012, with 1 December being the official date for compliance with the ruling. Plibersek said the Government and the ACCC will be monitoring compliance closely.

“We will be closely watching the new packages to ensure that they comply with the regulations because we know that Big Tobacco will use every trick in the book to try and get around the new requirements,” she said.

“Where we identify any examples of possible non-compliance before the implementation dates we will be letting the companies know so they can rectify any issues.”

The behavioural economics of plain packaging

by Bri Williams ON 15 August 2012

The Australian Federal Government has successfully withstood a High Court challenge on the constitutional legitimacy of plain packaging legislation. So with help from the field of behavioural economics, let’s now look at the behavioural legitimacy of the decision to ban all branding from tobacco packaging.

Behavioural economics

Behavioural economics is a field of study that starts with the proposition that we are all prone to make decisions that are not always in our own best interest. We sign up to gyms we don’t attend, we buy things we don’t need because they’re on sale, we volunteer our time to causes, we drive further to get four cents off a litre of petrol… we do things that an economist would say are just not rational. And smoking, something that uncontrovertibly poses a significant health risk (not to mention is very expensive), is well and truly in the irrational bucket.

Three things to be behaviourally effective

For something to be behaviourally effective – in this case getting the target to not take up smoking – there are generally three things you need to do:

Make it hard: create obstacles and/or overwhelm the decision making process,
make it socially unacceptable: create fear of being socially shunned, and
negatively impact self identity: create dissonance between sense of self and behaviour.

1. Will plain packaging make it hard to take up smoking?

Behavioural economics affirms that we are programmed to find the path of least resistance. For example, having your phone with you all the time invariably means you will check your email and social networks more often. Creating a barrier to access by leaving your phone in the other room however will reduce the likelihood of incessant checking.

And so it is with smoking. There are two parts to making it hard to take up smoking.

a. Overwhelm with undifferentiated choice

Known as the ‘choice paradox’, as consumers we seek to have an array of choice only to be overwhelmed by it when it comes to the crunch. Insurance, banking and superannuation are salient examples.

Plain packaging will play a role in confusing consumer choice. Where once a smoker could easily identify their preferred brand by the packet’s colour and logo, removal of such mnemonic devices will inhibit the ease of recall and selection. This is particularly so with an inexperienced smoker who may still be in the impulse rather than addictive phase.

b. Impede ease of physical access

Making access to cigarettes more difficult is key to reducing use. Age restrictions, requiring ID, and now having the product locked away in cupboards behind counters are great strategies to interfere with ease of access.

In this regard, plain packaging in unlikely to have any incremental impact. Since the introduction of mandated cupboards, branding has been hidden from view and so the smoker has had to ask the shop assistant to find the product. While it may slow down the attendant, plain package or branded, the sale will proceed.

2. Will plain packaging make smoking socially unacceptable?

We are enormously influenced by what others do. Known as ‘herding’, ‘social norming’ or ‘band wagoning’, we tend to stay with the pack most of the time. While we each like to think we are above average (and studies have shown that more people rate themselves an above-average driver than 50% of the population!) most of our behaviour is about adopting what is the societal norm. Hence so many have joined Facebook and LinkedIn – check out the daily commuter cycle if you don’t believe me.

Smoking has undeniably been moved into the ‘less acceptable’ than ‘acceptable’ category, and the TV show Mad Men with its constant puffing attests to how far we’ve come in a couple of generations.

Will plain packaging increase the level of social unacceptability? No. For this to happen, we instead need to rely on continued efforts. First, the separation of areas in which people can smoke so that it is undesirable to leave the gang to go and have a cigarette. And second, society has to continue to stigmatise smoking – that means not giving it credibility in films, for example.

3. Will plain packaging negatively impact self-identity?

Each of us has a sense of who we are and spends most of our time subconsciously assessing the world for how it fits with our self belief. When something doesn’t reconcile between how we see ourselves and our behaviour, we experience a psychological tension called ‘cognitive dissonance’. Because this state is uncomfortable, we do a few things to rebalance.

Ignore the new information

When confronted with information that we don’t like, we tend to ignore it. If you find yourselves switching off from Transport Accident Commission ads or avoiding doctor’s appointments, you’ll know what I mean. This is the trap the current grotesque ads on cigarette packets fall into – smokers simply ignore the ad.

Distort the new information to fit our self view

Ever sat in a meeting and had two people form completely opposing views on the basis of the same information? Chances are they have simply filtered it through their own internal narrative to make sense of how it fits with their existing ideas.

Modify our behaviour to fit

Least likely but possible, we can modify our behaviour if it is out of whack with how we are or want to be. Hello diets, hello gym.

The government will be hoping that plain packaging will encourage smokers (or pre-smokers) to modify their behaviour because there is no longer a brand to use as an expression of self-identity. However, I think this horse bolted when tobacco advertising was strangled years ago, and now the bigger identity at play is as a ‘smoker’, not as an ‘XYZ brand smoker’. In that respect, plain packaging will not adversely impact self identity because it’s the act of smoking that is the identity, not the brand.

Further, a probable scenario is that those who smoke will see plain packaging as a brutal attempt to thwart their freedom to choose rather than an act of good intent. This will likely incite anger and result in a recommitment to identifying as a rebel/individual/outsider.

So will plain packaging work?

Will it work? As a behaviourally strategy on its own, plain packaging has some shortcomings. Tobacco is an addictive product so the fact that a smoker’s preferred brand is now in an unbranded packet will not be enough to have them quit. But for people at the point of considering smoking, it may at least create brand confusion and limit any residual halo effect the brands may have. The great thing is that plain packaging is not a strategy on its own, and when viewed in the context of tobacco pricing, Quit campaigns, limits on product availability and restrictions on use, we can at least be sure that every opportunity to eradicate smoking is being considered.

Plain packaging appeal rejected, exiling big tobacco to marketing wasteland

by Marketing ON 15 August 2012

Big tobacco’s attempt to overturn the Federal Government’s plain packaging laws has been thrown out in a ruling issued this morning by the High Court.

The laws, which come into effect on 1 December, will see plain packaging enforced on tobacco products preventing companies from using brand marks or logos on packs and restricting them to standardised olive green packaging.

British American Tobacco (BAT), Japan Tobacco International, Philip Morris and Imperial Tobacco Australia launched counteraction against the Government’s Tobacco Plain Packaging Act in April, arguing that it was unconstitutional to deny them the use of trademarked material.

Witholding reasons reasons for the decision until a later date, the Court ruled against the appeal simply, indicating a majority found the legislation not contrary to Section 51(xxxi) of the Constitution.

The decision is expected to have influence on similar moves being considered in the United Kingdom and New Zealand and will set a precedent globally, barring a successful appeal from big tobacco in their last avenue of recourse – an appeal to the World Trade Organisation.

Attorney-General Nicola Roxon said the victory would stop cigarette packets from being “mobile billboards” but reiterated the legislation would not extend to other categories, such as alcohol or fast food.

“Plain packaging is a vital preventative public health measure, which removes the last way for big tobacco to promote its deadly products,” Roxon said. “Over the past two decades, more than 24 different studies have backed plain packaging, and now it will finally become a reality.”

“The message to the rest of the world is big tobacco can be taken on and beaten. Without brave governments willing to take the fight up to big tobacco, they’d still have us believing that tobacco is neither harmful nor addictive.”

Read: Marketing‘s investigation into the consumer behaviour behind smoking and expert opinions on whether plain packaging will succeed.

BAT Australia spokesman Scott McIntyre said the only winners from the Tobacco Plain Packaging Act (TPP) would be criminals who sell illegal cigarettes around Australia. “We still believe the government had no right to remove a legal company’s intellectual property but BATA will comply with this and every other law.”

According to the Australian Retailers Association (ARA) the decision will have detrimental and unintended consequences on Australian retailers. “Retailers now face the costs of plain packaging transactions which will see a significant increase in the time taken to complete a transaction as all products will be near identical,” ARA’s executive director Russell Zimmerman said. “Transaction time increases are estimated to cost businesses up to half a billion dollars, which is the equivalent of 15,000 jobs.”

“While the retail industry is supportive of initiatives which demonstrate a positive effect on health, smaller retailers are simply in no position to take on costs as a result of duplicate laws which cancel each other out and bring no demonstrable benefit to public health,” Zimmerman added.

UK to follow Australia with tobacco plain packaging review

by Marketing ON 16 April 2012

In breaking news from the UK, a review into introducing mandatory plain packaging for tobacco products has been launched by the government.

The consultation, which will launch today, is being undertaken to work out whether plain packaging could reduce the appeal of tobacco, and follows the example set by the Australian government when legislation enforcing plain packaging was passed in November last year.

Health secretary for the UK Government, Andrew Lansley, has said the Government wants tobacco companies to have “no business” in Britain, according to UK Marketing Magazine (no connection to this publication).

The consultation document will reportedly claim branded cigarette packets create ‘smoker identity’, and cites a AU$92 million increase in sales of Lambert & Butler after it introduced the promotional ‘Celebration Pack’, and research that claims smoking causes 100,000 deaths a year in the UK.

The review will be undertaken without the consultation of tobacco companies, departing from the approach taken to tackle obesity health issues.

According to Marketing UK, Lansley said: “We don’t work in partnership with the tobacco companies because we are trying to arrive at a point where they have no business in this country.”

Barring a successful high court challenge from tobacco companies in Australia, plain packaging will come into play in December this year. Marketing’s investigation into the branding implications of the change for tobacco companies shows that while packaging plays an important role in tobacco sales in Australia, its removal may not be enough to stamp out smoking.