sample="rhetorical" bates="TIMN0286562" isource="pm" decade="1970" class="ui" date="19860801" 7210 09 04 201 1 OMTbur We strongly oppose the proposals that have been made to ban or further restrict tobacco product advertising. We do so on behalf of a wider group than our member companies. The proposals are of grave concern to the entire tobacco community. Mr. Chairman, after the rhetoric and emotion are brushed away, the fact is that no lawful consumer product is subject to greater or more severe advertising restrictions than tobacco products. That fact was ignored by those who appeared before this committee two weeks ago. No advertising is more closely monitored, studied, or reported on than tobacco product advertising. No advertising is required to meet more exacting or rigorous standards. No advertising is required to carry health warnings that are as threatening. No industry, other than tobacco, has been required to contend with the burden of rotating warnings. Four years before the oldest current teenager was born, the major United States cigarette manufacturers voluntarily caused advertising in campus publications, even though the overwhelming majority of college students are old enough to legally purchase cigarettes. In 1964, three years before any current teenager was born, the companies agreed advertising principles that continue to guide cigarette advertising in the United States to this day. In 1969, when the oldest living teenager was only two, the cigarette companies offered to discontinue all advertising on radio and television, and that offer was accepted by the Congress in 1970. The cigarette industry also has adopted and aggressively implemented restrictions on cigarette sampling, and we have undertaken positive and highly successful programs on the issue of youth smoking. The industry long has taken the position that smoking is for adults only, adults who choose to smoke. The industry’s voluntary restrictions have been designed, of course, to implement that policy decision. But in addition, the Institute and its member companies have sponsored advertisements and programs encouraging the parents of young people to intercede with their children to prevent smoking. My point is that cigarette advertising already is subject to severe restrictions and that the manufacturers have substantially exceeded their legal obligation in this area. To be frank, Mr. Chairman, we are tempted to believe that the motive underlying the cause for further legislation is purely punitive. For some people, the very existence of tobacco product advertising apparently is an unwelcome reminder that some Americans have chosen to continue to purchase such products despite the anti-tobacco lobby’s demands for a tobacco-free society. But whatever may be said of the underlying motives, two points are nonetheless clear. The first is that this proposal presents a radical departure from the informational objective that Congress repeatedly has endorsed in this area. Second, the evidence squarely refutes any claim that further restrictions would discourage consumption. Cigarette advertising is brand advertising, Mr. Chairman. It is designed to prompt smokers to switch brands or to keep them loyal to the brands that they already smoke. It does not cause smoking any more than soap advertising causes people to bathe or detergent advertising causes people to wash their clothes. No witness at the hearing two weeks ago offered any evidence to the contrary. Assertions and heated rhetoric cannot supply the missing link. In closing, I must make one extremely important point. In effect, the current proposals invite Congress to declare that the American people cannot be trusted to respond rationally to advertising or to deal responsibly with truthful information. They also invite Congress to say that the American people are too dull, unintelligent, or unsophisticated to think or make decisions for themselves. In addition, they invite Congress to tell women, blacks and Hispanics, groups that the proponents of legislation have labeled as especially vulnerable, that they in particular need help from Congress in weighing information and deciding what products to purchase and to use. Finally, the current proposals invite Congress to get into the business of censoring truthful information. We might do well in this connection to recall the views expressed by Justice Brandeis nearly 60 years ago. . “Experience,” said Justice Brandeis, “should teach us to be most on our guard to protect liberty when the Government’s purposes are beneficent.” And then he added that “the greatest dangers to liberty lurk in the insidious encroachment by men of zeal, well-meaning but without understanding.” CHAIRMAN WAXMAN:Thank you very much Mr. Kornegay. MR. KORNEGAY:This concludes my statement, Mr. Chairman, and I will of course be happy to attempt to respond to any questions that the committee may have of me. would also like, Mr. Chairman – CHAIRMAN WAXMAN: No, Mr. Kornegay, we are going to have to move on. We will have the rest of that statement that you are reading to us in the record, but I want to hear now from Mr. Boddewyn. MR. KORNEGAY: Yes, sir, I was just going to offer some articles that I referred to for the record. CHAIRMAN WAXMAN: We will be glad to take whatever articles or attachments you wish to make your statement and consider them for the record. MR. KORNEGAY: Thank you. CHAIRMAN WAXMAN: Mr. Boddewyn. STATEMENT OF MR. J. J. BODDEWYN, PROFESSOR OF MARKETING AND INTERNATIONAL BUSINESS AT BARUCH MARKETING AND INTERNATIONAL BUSINESS AT BARUCH COLLEGE, CITY UNIVERSITY OF NEW YORK. MR. BODDEWYN I am Professor Jean Boddewyn of the City University of New York. Over the past 10 years, I have conducted 17 international surveys of the regulations of advertising in up to 54 countries. I have also been involved with a 16-country study Of tobacco advertising bans. This study was mainly based on reliable foreign government statistics. Since this subcommittee is interested in the impact of tobacco advertising bans on tobacco consumptions, I have summarized the key statistics on the chart before you. That is the chart where the central vertical line indicates the year of the ban in five free market economies, including Norway, which is the pilot country which everyone cites, and to the right of it you can see that in all five countries the ban was followed by an increase in cigarette consumption per capita. Clearly, you can already read my conclusion. Bans do not work. The second study with which I have been associated helps understand why the young start to smoke and under what conditions because this is an issue which has come up repeatedly. A number of people have kept saying repeatedly that it is advertising that makes young people start to smoke. The study I am referring to was conducted by the London-based Children’s Research Unit, which specializes in studies of the young. This firm conducted in 1985 and ’86 1000 interviews of boys and girls between the ages of 7 and 15 in each of four countries that differ in their control of tobacco advertising in addition to using similar data collected for the British government. Australia. Australia was selected because it has advertising restrictions, not a ban, similar to those in the United Kingdom. Norway was chosen because it has had a total tobacco advertising ban since 1975, eleven years ago. Spain and Hong Kong were selected because they permit tobacco advertising across all media. In other words, two countries with very few restrictions. In substance, the results of the Children’s Research Unit revealed that the percentage of regular smokers among juveniles – we are talking to a group of 7 to 15 – is generally higher in Norway, where there has been a tobacco advertising ban for 10 years, than in other countries where there is no such ban. In fact, Mr. Chairman, the percentage of regular smokers among Norweigan youth, age 7 to 15, is two times higher than among Australian and Spanish juvenile smokers and 10 times higher than the percentage of juvenile smokers in Hong Kong. In other words, these very recent survey data revealed that the ban in Norway has not been accompanied by lower juvenile smoking incidence than in Spain and Hong Kong, where there are only minor advertising restrictions, or than in Australia and the United Kingdom, where there are some major advertising restrictions but no ban. So clearly other factors must be at stake. What are these factors? When asked this question; that is, what are the motivations for smoking, under what conditions did you start smoking, the juveniles in these four countries mention advertising as the most important reason not more than 1 percent of the time in Australia, Hong Kong, and Norway. So what were the reasons that were elicited? Curiosity, dare-deviltry, and particularly the smoking behavior and influence of parents, siblings, and friends. They ranked higher by far. Such a finding that a combination of personal, family, and social factors played an overwhelming role in the decision to start smoking is hardly novel, since many of the studies in the United States and abroad have reached a similar conclusion. What is new in this study by the London-based Children’s Research Unit is that for the first time thy have revealed that the degree of tobacco advertising control; that is, whether there is a little in the way of restrictions or a lot or a ban as in Norway, that the degree of tobacco advertising control does not appear to be a significant factor in the decision to start smoking and in the circumstances that surround it. In conclusion, Mr. Chairman – CHAIRMAN WAXMAN:Thank you very much, Mr. Boddewyn. Now, we will move on to Mr. Ward. STATEMENT OF MR. SCOTT WARD, PROFESSOR OF MARKETING, WHARTON SCHOOL OF BUSINESS (COMMITTEE INTEREST.) MR. WARD: Mr. Chairman and members of the subcommittee, my name is Scott Ward. I am Professor of Marketing at the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania. I publish extensively in the field of marketing. My books include “The Most Widely Used Marketing Management Case Book,” and I serve on the editorial boards of the Journal of Consumer Research and the Journal of Advertising Research. I have directed major research grants for the National Science Foundation, the National Institute of Mental Health, Office of Child Development, and the Ford Foundation. My research has focused on children’s reactions to advertising. In the late 1970’s, I conducted government-sponsored research to improve drug abuse prevention advertising. My testimony today responds to proposals to ban or further restrict tobacco product advertising. I am convinced that the proposed restrictions would be ineffective in getting people to stop smoking. I believe the enthusiasm for cigarette advertising controls reveals a lack of understanding of what advertising involves, and this is the focus of my testimony. Among other things, the current proposals fail to appreciate the distinction between advertising for new products is to make people aware of the existence of a product category, to inform potential buyers of product attributes, and to interest them in a specific brand. In mature product markets, by contrast, there are few first-time buyers or nonbuyers who are unaware of the category’s existence. People have become product users, or they have tried the product and not repeat purchased, or they have never tried the product and they never will because they don’t want it. There is not much to say in advertising about mature products that people don’t already know or have opinions about. The role of advertising for mature products is to keep consumers who use the product loyal to the brand being advertised or to prompt consumers of other brands to switch. Another issue is the charge that cigarette advertisers use attractive models and attractive settings to try to glorify the product and to get people to feel they can somehow be like the models portrayed. But attractive men and women are used to sell everything from floor polish to mouth wash, and advertising are not trying to convince people that scrubbing floors or gargling is attractive. Advertising models and scenery try to gain attention in today’s very cluttered media environment. People are exposed to hundreds of ads and promotions each day. Advertisers compete fiercely for their fleeting attention through repetition and appealing advertising. For mature products the goal is to get users of a product category to remember a brand via the images portrayed. For example, we might associated Cliff Robertson with one long distance company or O. J. Simpson beating his luggage to a particular car rental agency, Susanne Sommers in a hardware chain. Even if these ads get your attention and you remember them, it strains credulity to believe that consumers feel they will somehow be like Cliff Robertson if they choose the company he advocates. But if you associate Cliff Robertson with AT&T, then you have demonstrated the advertising objective. But many people will not directly associate Cliff Robertson with AT&T, or make the association but they will then choose MCI, and that brings me to my next point. Advertising is not the all-powerful force that has been alleged in earlier testimony. Those who favor banning or restricting advertising vastly overestimate the power of advertising and underestimate the intelligence and will of consumers. Decades of advertising research clearly demonstrates that consumers are not Pavlov’s dogs, malleable putty, or blank slates. Individual audience members bring to advertisements – they see the sum of myriad experiences and beliefs, and they evaluate commercial messages not in a vacuum but in the context of their lives. My own research has shown that when people are exposed to advertising they may ignore it, go to the bathroom, laugh, forget, or even counter-argue. For example, you might disregard the most appealing advertisement for a fast food chain because you are on a diet or you don’t like what you regard to be junk food, or you may decide against chewing gum despite the beautiful people in the gum commercials because you think that chewing gum is unattractive. Cigarette advertising even contains the counter argument and the Surgeon General’s warning in each and every ad. Turning to youngsters, my own research indicates that they, too, develop skills for evaluating advertising and that advertising is among the least influential factors in a young person’s developing patterns of consumer behavior. In this respect, I am in agreement with Dr. Mortimer Lippsett, the Director of the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, who testified before this committee three years ago, and what he said then is also true today” “The most forceful determinants of smoking are parents, peers, and older siblings.” Government programs concerning smoking should be based on acknowledgement of and respect for the intelligence, will, and complexities of people. There is no silver bullet here. There is no simple answer to the complex question of why people smoke. Advertising is a convenient target because it is more visible than the myriad and subtle social forces that actually shape the decision to smoke. But it is just plain wrong to believe that advertising is so powerful and consumers are so stupid and uninformed that restricting it Will have any meaningful impact, and it would start government down a perilous road in advertising regulation away from its traditional role of ensuring the truthfulness and down a road toward censorship. Thank you. MR. KORNEGAY: Miss Davidson STATEMENT OF MS. JOLLIANE DAVIDSON, TESTIFYING AS AN EDUCATIONAL CONSULTANT. MS. DAVIDSON: Thank you very much. I appreciate your generosity in permitting me to be added to the list giving testimony. I am Jolliane Davidson. I am from Iowa, and I have been involved in educational goverances at both the state and national levels for over 13 years. I want it made clear to the committee that I am not testifying on behalf of any educational association nor as a past officer of an educational association. I am testifying as an education consultant. There have been many comments this morning relating to the importance of education, and I want to talk to you about a project called Helping Youth Decide, which I think directly relates to the issue at hand. The booklet, Helping Youth Decide, we believe will help parents help their children work through the decisionmaking process, including the decisionmaking ACE-FEDERAL REPORTERS, INC. 202-347-3700 Nationwide Coverage 800-336-6646 7120