Do Camel Ads Make Teen Girls Smoke? The Stats Aren't as Clear Cut as You'd Think
It's not at all clear that R.J. Reynolds' ad campaign for "light and luscious" Camel No. 9 cigarettes has created extra smokers among teen girls, even though that's the takeaway from a new study in the journal Pediatrics and many headlines in the business press. The devil is in the details -- and it's worth exploring them before we, once again, denounce tobacco companies for advertising a product about which there is no longer any mystery. (It's addictive and gives you cancer. There, I said it.)
The study, which took several years, asked girls and boys if they smoked and if they had a favorite cigarette ad. The kids were repeatedly asked these questions as they got older from 12 to 16. Among girls, there was a sudden jump in 2008 for Camel's No. 9 cigarette ads, the study said, which came immediately after the company had run advertising in Vogue and other magazines touting the pink cigs in 2007. Here's the chart (girls are A, boys are B):
A preference for any ad rose from 34 percent to 44 percent. The preference for Camel ads rose from 10 percent to 22 percent.*
As far as I can tell, the study doesn't actually conclude that the girls who liked the ads tended to end up smoking Camel. Rather, it says:
... teenagers who reported having a favorite cigarette ad at baseline (32% of sample) were more likely to have smoked by survey 5 than those who did not have a favorite cigarette ad ...
... The theory of persuasive communication predicts that this increase in receptivity should translate into increased smoking initiation in the remaining 5 years of the smoking initiation age window."The theory of persuasive communication"? In other words, the researchers don't have a specific link between trendy new Camel ads and teen girls actually smoking. They just think that's probably happening, or going to happen, but it isn't in the data right now.
An alternative conclusion might be that ad agencies Agent 16 and Gyro Worldwide, which created the campaign, ought to be replaced with a shop that is better at surreptitiously persuading girls to smoke -- because nabbing only 12 extra percentage points in preference over four years after spending $50 million seems rather lame.
*A previous version of this item incorrectly described the data in this chart. Apologies for the error -- and thanks to the BNET reader who pointed it out.