How tobacco companies use experiential marketing. Despite dramatic declines in smoking, the tobacco industry continues to innovate to rebrand its public image and maintain its bottom line. Through a combination of strategies, including expanding its product portfolio, the industry is aggressively growing its market base among youth and young adults. Faced with an ever-declining base for its core product β the cigarette β the tobacco industry has emerged from the shadows of these largely behind-the-scenes efforts and back-room dealings.
The good news is that the public is as distrustful as ever of the tobacco and vaping industry, despite their extensive public relations and marketing strategies. For now. To shed light on how the tobacco industry wields their influence, this report details four primary industry strategies:.
Thanks to years of successful tobacco control policies, including smoke-free air legislation, tobacco taxes, restrictions on youth marketing and access, and public health campaigns that denormalized smoking, the dramatic decline in the prevalence of smoking is considered one of the most successful public health efforts of the last century. Americans now understand that smoking is addictive, dangerous and costly to society. In response to these dramatic declines in cigarette sales, the tobacco industry has introduced new products designed to protect and expand its shrinking customer base.
Use of these new products have soared β almost exclusively by young people. The problem is only getting worse β preliminary data for show that number increasing to Two companies dominate the U. E-cigarette companies have enjoyed an even greater growth in recent years. This investment and positioning give the tobacco industry direct access to a new pipeline of millions of youth e-cigarette users, most of whom were not smokers in the first place.
Equally important, these new products provide a platform from which the industry can position themselves as trying to help people quit. These products have also achieved something the tobacco industry has attempted for years: a consumer-acceptable product that they could position as less harmful than a traditional cigarette.
