Allen Carr's Easyway to Stop Smoking - Allen Carr [24]
Tobacco marketing executives are well aware of the importance of the sub-conscious and the power of suggestion and they have used it for years to promote the image of smoking as normal, natural and desirable. When we are growing up we are bombarded with messages that cigarettes help us relax, concentrate and handle stress. We form the belief that cigarettes are special, precious things and that we are somehow incomplete without them.
You think I exaggerate? Remember those old war movies? The dying soldier is always given a cigarette to ease him peacefully and nobly to his heroic death. What’s the last request of the man facing death by a firing squad? That’s right—a cigarette. The subtext running beneath this seemingly innocent request is a powerful one. What the message is really saying is, ‘The most precious thing on this earth, my last thought and action, will be the smoking of a cigarette.’ The impact of this does not register on our conscious minds, but the sleeping partner has time to absorb it.
You think that things have changed recently? Not a chance. While TV advertising for tobacco products has been banned for years, the appearance of smoking in movies and on TV continues unabated. Look at Bruce Willis in Die Hard or Mel Gibson in Lethal Weapon franchises. These movies, aimed at teenage boys, glamorize smoking in a way a TV ad never could. For two hours Mr. Willis and Mr. Gibson chain-smoke their way through a myriad of death-defying and heroic sequences. The subtext again is very simple: Even heroes need their little friend. What better way to show your cool and rebellious nature than to smoke?
Does this happen by accident, or is it part of a concerted strategy by tobacco companies to promote smoking to teenagers as cool, rebellious and desirable? I’m not a conspiracy theorist but it’s obvious to me that if you are in a business where 5 million of your customers die every year, you need to replace them somehow. Given that over 90% of smokers start before their eighteenth birthday, it makes sense to market to as young a demographic as possible, without being seen to be doing so.
As a demonstration of the tobacco industry’s success in promoting to children, for years the American tobacco giant RJ Reynolds ran a campaign based on a kid’s cartoon character, Joe Camel. Joe Camel took RJR’s market share among smokers under 18 years-old from 0.5% to 32.8% in three years. In research published in the Journal of the American Medical Association, over 90% of six-year-olds matched the Joe Camel character with a cigarette. According to the same research, for a time, Joe Camel was as well known as Mickey Mouse among American pre-schoolers.
And TV is no better than cinema. I recently watched an episode of the otherwise wonderful West Wing. Martin Sheen’s character, the President of the US, when faced with a difficult decision in a stressful situation, wanders to his private study and sitting alone with the enormous burdens of his office, lights a cigarette. Once again the message being promoted: Smoking relieves stress. Even the most powerful man in the world needs his little crutch.
Think about it, what better ad could you have than actors and actresses we love and admire smoking on-screen? John Travolta, Al Pacino, Clint Eastwood, Bruce Willis, Sean Penn, Julia Roberts, Nicole Kidman, Nicolas Cage, Matt Damon, Humphrey Bogart, Lauren Bacall, Marlene Dietrich, Leonardo di Caprio, Gwyneth Paltrow…the list is endless.
Who knows whether Hollywood continues to benefit financially from working with the tobacco companies to promote smoking (though this has unquestionably been the case in years gone by) but every time an actor lights up in a movie aimed at kids, the message that smoking is normal, desirable and glamorous is reinforced. That message is filed away in the sub-conscious and the cumulative impact of it being repeated thousands upon thousands of times during a child’s formative years builds a desire for kids to experiment.