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Cigarette Advertising is Back on Television: It's Called 'Fuzzy Advertising'
By Carole Wade
November 7, 2003

Once upon a time tobacco companies promoted smoking on the airwaves. The mega-millions-of-dollars-a-year-salaried executives knew that their luxury lifestyles depended on "getting" Americans hooked on nicotine. Now, tobacco companies are back on the air touting their supposedly "do-good" educational marketing -- the Government's ban on cigarette marketing to kids be damned!

Tobacco companies are the masters when it comes to marketing the smoking of cigarettes to teenagers. While they publicly call themselves "responsible marketers of tobacco," in fact cigarette companies' visions are just the opposite. Every day tobacco companies advertise on television to hype their companies' "do-good" programs for young adults. Their ads ramble on about their concern for the environment and about how their websites promote links to help smokers stop smoking. But all the while the tobacco companies know full well that their ads are only aimed at getting their names out to a new audience: they need new fresh young smokers.

What is extremely interesting about the new "do-good" educational advertising by cigarette companies on television are their "sexy" female voices over the air. As the tobacco companies ostensibly educate us about their "upstanding" community values, the "sexy" female voices cleverly promote and advertise their cigarettes through "fuzzy advertising" to 13, 14, 15, and 16 year-old children listeners.

Tobacco companies are the ultimate magicians. Are they responsible for using "fuzzy" supposedly-educational advertising to lure new adolescents into a life of addiction? Yes, they are. Are the giant tobacco companies looking for new smokers? Absolutely. They have to promote their tobacco products: their financial existence depends on it.

The arithmetic is simple. Millions and millions of their present customers are dying from lung cancer and other diseases related to tobacco. What's more, over the decades their "old" nicotine-addicted customers "puffed" their last breaths and have since been laid to rest.

Do the mega-rich tobacco companies' executives care about cigarette related deaths? No, the greedy tobacco industry executives only care about their homes in Boca Raton, Palm Beach, Aspen, and Vail. They care about their yachts and private airplanes.

Cigarette companies have a mission and a vision. Tobacco companies are notorious for putting out their message of pretending to reduce the tar and nicotine in their cigarette products. They even preach from their pulpits with all the usual phrases: "We care about addiction. We want you to stop smoking. We urge your children to stay away from smokeless tobacco. We frown upon second-hand smoke. Our cigarettes are low in tar."

The 1990s were dedicated to banning the selling of tobacco products to children. Back then, children were viewing close to half-a-million tobacco advertisements on television yearly. The Children's Television Act of 1990 mandated that all broadcasters carry children's educational or instructional programming as a condition for license renewal. However, the biggest problem with enforcement of the Act is the undefined length of time a television station must carry the educational programming.

Children and young adults emulate what they see and hear. Tobacco companies have found a new way to enter into our children's rooms through so-called "educational advertisements." Cigarette companies bank on kids' listening to their "fuzzy" messages: Smoke cigarettes.

Tobacco companies have history on their side. Cigarette companies know that children become life-long smokers during their adolescent years. American advertising uses messages which are often filled with sexual innuendoes in an attempt to sell products. Cigarette companies know that their "sexy" female announcers can sell their cigarettes surreptitiously ... and keep the money flowing in.

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Carole Wade is a writer who lives in Los Angeles, California. She has worked on Team Bush, Rogan for Congress, and the 1987 Bob Dole Presidential campaign. Ms. Wade is also a Bush-Cheney '04 Pioneer. Her first summer position in 1974, before entering College, was an office aide in the Executive Office of the President under Richard Nixon. Her articles and interviews appear frequently in local and national newspapers.