Pakistan: Tobacco industry took advantage of pandemic to promote new products

The tobacco industry has exploited the Covid19 pandemic to boost sales of its products and improve its image, particularly online, in many countries. In Pakistan, British American Tobacco used influencers to promote its new products on social media.

Since the beginning of the health crisis, the tobacco industry has not hesitated to use the same discourse as governments and health professionals in their marketing campaign. It actively promotes its new tobacco and nicotine products as risk-free alternatives. The tobacco industry is thus resuming communication highlighting supposedly safer products despite the absence of established evidence.

Pakistan, a key market for the tobacco industry

A recent report published by the Bureau of Investigative Journalism (BIJ)[1] revealed that Pakistan has emerged as a marketing hotspot for new tobacco products, particularly British American Tobacco’s (BAT) VELO brand nicotine pouches. VELO was launched by BAT in Pakistan in December 2019, with a campaign led by the tobacco company’s PR agency, Ogilvy Pakistan. New Products Director Paul Lageweb identified Pakistan as a “key test market” for these new products, calling it “BAT’s most exciting opportunity.” Tobacco consumption continues to grow in Pakistan due to lack of awareness about its dangers, low prices, aggressive marketing by the tobacco industry and continued population growth.[2]The country has 208 million inhabitants and two thirds are under 30 years old.[3].

VELO and other BAT products are extremely popular in Pakistan because of the manufacturer's "reassuring" narrative that it wants to provide "potentially reduced-risk alternative nicotine products to adult smokers who want to quit smoking." The "harm reduction" argument is heavily promoted by BAT in its product presentations, and the tobacco company seeks to present itself as "part of the solution" to the tobacco epidemic.[4].

The massive use of social networks to attract young people

As revealed by the BIJ investigation, BAT recently invested more than $1 billion in a global marketing campaign using influencers to promote its nicotine products, including VELO.[5]. For Pakistan, 40 young influencers were hired to promote the product online, including on TikTok, Instagram and Facebook through the hashtag #openthecan. The hashtag has been viewed over 13 million times and has a potential audience of over 181 million. The influencers emphasize the discreet and trendy side of nicotine pouches in their advertising pitch.

BAT regularly uses social media to promote its products. In Sweden, the #LyftSnus campaign (Lyft is a product similar to VELO) was viewed more than 15 million times also on TikTok. Internet users were then invited to post videos in situations where they were consuming these nicotine pouches. Through targeted campaigns, the tobacco industry seeks to recruit new consumers to deal with the decline in sales of traditional cigarettes but also to maintain the confusion between this type of product (nicotine pouches without tobacco) and snus which contains tobacco but is banned in many markets.[6].

Since these pouches do not contain tobacco, they are exempt from the regulations that apply to these products. This is particularly the case for the advertising bans in force concerning tobacco products, adopted in most countries. The objective of manufacturers in positioning themselves across the entire spectrum of nicotine products is to offer several entry points into nicotine addiction with possible co-consumption and switching from one product to another, thanks to the particularly addictive nature of nicotine.

In Pakistan, according to Global Youth Tobacco Survey, approximately 10% of 13-15 year-olds regularly consume tobacco products.

Keywords: Pakistan, nicotine pouch, VELO, BAT, social media

©Tobacco Free Generation

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[1] Matthew Chapman, New products, old tricks? Concerns big tobacco is targeting youngsters, The Bureau of Investigative Journalism, February 21, 2021, accessed June 28, 2021 [2] Musaddique Hussain, Abdul Majeed, Imran Imran, Muhammad Fawad Rasool, Ikhlaq Hussain, Qasim Barkat, Ximei Wu, Pakistan: time for stronger enforcement on tobacco control, British Medical Journal Blog, December 12, 2019, accessed June 28, 2021 [3] Goujon Anne, Wazir Asif, Gailey Nicholas, “Pakistan: a country of more than 200 million inhabitants lagging behind in the demographic transition”, Population & Societies, 2020/4 (No. 576), p. 1-4. DOI: 10.3917/popsoc.576.0001. [4] Yves Martinet, Emmanuelle Béguinot, Pascal Diethlem, Nathalie Wirth, Nicotine industry: risk reduction, an exclusively financial objective, the Practitioner's Review, January 2021, volume 71, number 1, 2021;71(1);27-32 [5] Generation Without Tobacco, BAT invests £1bn to promote new products to young people, February 23, 2021, accessed June 28, 2021 [6] Generation Without Tobacco, Snus or nicotine pouches? The industry confuses the issue, June 22, 2021, accessed June 28, 2021 National Committee Against Smoking |