Women: A Century of Targeted Marketing by the Tobacco Industry

Since the 1920s, the tobacco industry has made a deliberate and calculated effort to convince women that tobacco products are right for them. Unfortunately, 100 years later, the industry is still engaged in these efforts. On March 8, as the world celebrates the achievements of women around the world, Philip Morris International (PMI) is once again trying to deflect the issue of women’s empowerment. It appears that its strategy this year has been to spotlight the women who work for the company. For a century, the tobacco industry has aggressively targeted women. Through its marketing campaigns, the industry capitalizes on the challenges women face in society and claims to be committed to helping them assert themselves and empower themselves. For example:

• Weight: Tobacco companies marketed cigarettes as appetite suppressants in the early 1920s, and this idea of weight control and femininity persists today. As recently as 2011, several companies introduced new brands of "slim" cigarettes.^[1] in the world.
• Beauty and fashion: Advertisements consistently portray female smokers as young, beautiful, glamorous and trendy. The industry also attempts to appeal to women with feminine designs on packaging. In a 1992 document[2], Philip Morris said: “…we feel that women are a primary target for our innovative packaging task, and that more fashionable feminine packaging can increase the relevance of some of our brands.”
• Emancipation: In the United States in the 1960s, messages such as "It's for women", were designed in connection with the development of feminist movements. Such an approach still exists today, for example, in Asia, where advertisements feature themes related to independence[3].

In 2010, the World Health Organization[4] reported that in industrialized countries, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) is now almost as high in women as in men. In addition, WHO has shown that in the United States, lung cancer mortality in women has increased by 800% since 1950, and eclipsed breast cancer in 1987 as the leading cause of cancer death in women. Women who smoke also have a higher risk of coronary heart disease. With the introduction of new products[5], the manufacturer continues this strategy of targeting women. A recent Stanford report shows that Philip Morris partners with fashion companies and has sponsored beauty shows to promote its brand. The official IQOS Instagram pages for Italy, Japan and Colombia also have explicitly feminine posts, showing tobacco products next to lipstick, shoes and other accessories. ©Tobacco Free Generation

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[1] https://tobaccotactics.org/index.php?title=Targeting_Women_and_Girls [2] Ibid [3] https://apps.who.int/iris/bitstream/handle/10665/44342/9789241599511_eng.pdf?sequence=1 [4] Ibid [5] Jackler RK, Ramamurthi D, Axelrod A, Jung JK, Louis-Ferdinand NG, Reidel JE, Yu AWY, Jackler LM, Chau C. Global Marketing of IQOS The Philip Morris Campaign to Popularize “Heat Not Burn” Tobacco. SRITA White paper. February 21, 2020. (http://tobacco.stanford.edu/iqosanalysis) | ©National Committee Against Smoking |