Smoke on the web - Tobacco Marketing's Last Gasp?

British tobacco manufacturers currently have an unofficial agreement not to create web sites for their cigarette brands. But that doesn't mean they won't get involved with new media, as long as they think they can get away with it without causing a stir. A casual surf on AltaVista certainly reveals that there's no lack of smoking-related material on the web: a search for 'tobacco' returns 218,318 sites and one on 'smoking' returns 270,799. They vary from Choice Tobacco ("the best cigarette tobacco a little money can buy!!"), to "Eagle Tobacco, cigarettes exported all over the world", to Tobacco Heaven, which "offers the very best selection of cigars in the world", to pro-smoking groups such as the American Smokers Alliance. There's even a site from Dr Herman's (www.hermans.co.uk), "the UK's largest supplier of smoking paraphernalia and legal highs", whose visitors can buy all manner of smoking equipment, most of it designed to be used with substances rather more exotic than tobacco.

While most of these examples aren't exactly mainstream, more and more major tobacco brands are looking at how they can get involved in new media.

At the moment, they're prevented from launching UK sites for specific brands by the voluntary agreement - evidently, they recognise the potential for negative PR if they swamp the net with obvious marketing messages.

"If they started to advertise overtly," says Amanda Sandford, communications director for anti-smoking pressure group ASH, "they'd be open to criticism, so they're doing it surreptitiously."

Also, according to Aidan Cook, account director of cigarette paper brand Rizla's new-media agency Sense Internet, international tobacco brands face a particular dilemma on the web. "There's surprisingly little tobacco stuff on the web, even in Europe," he says. "There are so few country-specific brands, and with international brands, people are very twitchy.

They're worried about messing up their partners in other countries - products vary from country to country and you have to look at brand consistency."

Despite the potential drawbacks, the internet remains an attractive medium for tobacco brands, mainly because it's an ideal place to reach the youth market - their biggest target audience. So while theoretically they might be steering clear of new media, in reality tobacco companies are pushing their involvement with the web as far as they can. The most celebrated example is Circuit Breaker (www.circuitbreak.com), a site set up by BAT-owned tobacco company Brown and Williamson. The site is supposed to be a listings guide for the San Francisco area, but by a strange coincidence only clubs running promotions for Brown and Williamson's Lucky Strike brand are included (see panel). Similarly, RJ Reynolds, which owns the Camel brand, sponsored a German dance music site, while German cigarette brand West has its own site (www.west.de), packed with youth lifestyle content and West branding, including pictures of a West pack and the brand's slogan 'Test it'.

Amanda Sandford of ASH claims that this sort of thing is the thin end of the wedge. "What they seem to be doing is testing the water," she comments.

"I wouldn't be surprised if we have an internet promotion of something like Marlboro clothing, or other associated brand extensions. We're challenging advertising for things such as Marlboro clothes in print, and we're awaiting a response from the Advertising Standards Authority, which should provide us with guidance.

"There might be a voluntary agreement among cigarette brands not to have web sites, but ASH is campaigning for an outright ban. Voluntary agreements of that sort don't work because the tobacco companies just keep on seeing how far they can push it."

While they might not be able to advertise on the internet, the level of promotional activity tobacco companies can get away with using new media is considerably greater than with traditional media. It's natural that they should want to push this new-found freedom, however limited it might be, as far as they can.

For example, while Imperial Tobacco might not have a site for any of its cigarette brands, it does have one for Rizla (www.rizla. co.uk), the cigarette paper brand it acquired in January 1997.

The Rizla site lists clubs running Rizla promotions, and features information about the history of the company and brand, reviews of web sites, a light-hearted guide to the availability of Rizlas around the world, and entertainment content, including a competition and a Rizla screensaver.

According to Rizla papers brand manager Nick Cook, when Imperial took over Rizla the company had considerable reservations about the site. "Initially, the company as a whole was quite sceptical," he says. "Imperial Tobacco are always very sceptical about any international marketing activity."

Aidan Cook of Rizla's new-media agency Sense Internet confirms that the company was nervous about the possible PR damage a site could cause. "Originally, the client was very dubious," he says. "It took a year of evangelising from us. Rizla had a lack of faith that anyone would be at the other end.

It was also aware that there would be sensitive issues to address if it had a site. The possibility for controversy was something Rizla was very aware of, and it was nervous about it.

"Rizla's not actually a tobacco product, and it's not forced to abide by regulations on tobacco marketing, but it does so voluntarily. Put it like this: if it started behaving as if it wasn't covered by restrictions, it soon would be. There's only been positive feedback for the site so far, however. The punters seem to like it."

Rizla's Nick Cook agrees that the relatively uncontroversial nature of the site helped. "We're not actively promoting tobacco: it's more about the heritage and history of Rizla. We haven't had a single complaint, and whenever we do promotions, we always get some complaints. It would be a real shame if we had to stop doing the site, but I can't see it happening.

It would be very difficult for anyone to put their foot down and stop us doing what we do on the web."

In the absence of advertising, adds Nick Cook, the site is a good way to complement below-the-line activities and, in some cases, to replace them - particularly when it comes to ridding the brand of what he calls its 'flat cap' associations. "The company completely changed about two years ago. We re-established Rizla as a youth brand, starting with ads in places such as Loaded, Viz and so on. Then we had the Rizla Roadshow, where we went round festivals and clubs and gave out promotional t-shirts and talked to people about the history of Rizla and how the papers were made. The web site followed. People at the roadshow told us we should have all that information about history and heritage on a web site. It proved that people were really interested in that sort of thing.

"For our brand, the site is the ideal mechanism for talking to customers.

We can't afford the Imperial Tobacco route, which is to send loads of direct mail - but the web is an ideal way to reach people such as students, who are very much our target market. The site's traffic shot up when the student term started in the autumn."

Aidan Cook of Sense Internet adds that the site is a good way to reinforce a brand image which he admits has developed almost by default, rather than because the company has proactively shaped it. "The site is the only way Rizla has of talking to its customers, and it's certainly the only interactive way," he says.



HOGZONE - TOURING THE UK'S CLUBS

The UK's big tobacco companies may have agreed not to create web sites for their brands for the time being, but that doesn't stop them experimenting with other new media, rather than the web, in their attempts to reach young consumers. Gallaher's Benson and Hedges brand, for instance, recently sponsored Hogzone, a British club tour, which used interactive kiosks alongside light shows and promotional giveaways, such as packets of cigarettes, lighters and CDs. The kiosks didn't feature any Benson and Hedges branding, instead they concentrated on games and entertainment, with clubbers guided through the kiosk by a three-dimensional animated hedgehog called Benny. Stephanie Whitaker, managing director of Benson and Hedges' sales promotion agency Ignis, reckons the kiosks were central to the promotional offering. "It was a new presentation of the Benson and Hedges brand proposition. It's the biggest cigarette brand in Britain, but not for 18 to 24-year-olds. The electronic medium is very important in appealing to a youth audience. In the absence of a web site, the kiosks are a way tobacco companies can use new media and reach that youth audience. They can also do it in a fairly elliptical way, rather than forcing it down people's throats."

Ben Thornton, managing director of Zone, the agency which designed the content for the kiosks, claims the fact that the Benson and Hedges association was played down on the actual kiosks themselves in no way detracted from their power as a marketing tool. "The kiosk element is integral to the whole concept," he says, "even though there was no blatant branding on the kiosks. In fact, there was more of our branding than of Benson and Hedges'. But with dancing girls in t-shirts handing out freebies, there didn't have to be much branding. I think it was pretty obvious anyway. Benson and Hedges have plenty of marketing money to blow, and if they can do it surreptitiously, they will."

The Hogzone tour was launched in March 1997, and Ignis expects to give it another outing later this year.



LEGAL AND REGULATORY RESTRICTIONS

The legal status of tobacco marketing on the internet is unclear, and the situation further complicated by the global nature of the web - with regulations varying from country to country. Certainly, German cigarette brand West can get away with a blatantly branded, marketing-led web site (www.west.de) which would be inadvisable, if not impossible, here or in the US.

Unsurprisingly, America has particularly strict regulations. Under the 1970 Cigarette Act, cigarette advertising on electronic media is prohibited.

However, when Brown and Williamson launched Circuit Breaker it was able to get round these restrictions by leaving Lucky Strike branding off the site. Initially, the site only acknowledged its origin when users came to fill in a form to register for a competition, where they were told they would be put on a cigarette brand's mailing list. After complaints and negative media attention, however, the site changed so that it features the sponsor's name prominently. What Lucky Strike has done is to find its way round the legal restrictions and market itself with more freedom than it could in any other medium. But it hasn't made itself popular, particularly when it used the site to collect information without acknowledging who it was being collected for.

In the UK, the lengths to which tobacco companies have pushed their web marketing has led to calls for a ban on tobacco involvement on the internet.

"Lucky Strike was a very devious way for a cigarette company to market one of its brands," comments anti-smoking pressure group ASH's communications director Amanda Sandford.

"The ban on TV tobacco advertising in Britain dates from 1964, and there was no such thing as the internet then." Advertising on TV, radio and other broadcast media is also covered by a 1991 European Directive. Yet it is ambiguous about new media, exempting "communication services providing items of information or other messages on individual demand" from any ban.

Stephanie Whitaker, managing director of sales promotion agency Ignis, which works on behalf of cigarette brand Benson & Hedges, claims companies are steering clear of the web until the legal position is clear. "If there's a sponsored activity which has a site, such as Formula One, there's usually cigarette branding, but otherwise there doesn't tend to be much on the web," she says. "Tobacco companies have always been very responsible about self-regulation. They don't want a war. We keep waiting in Britain for the new White Paper on tobacco advertising, which should be out this month. We want clarification of the legal position before we do anything."