Abstract
Objective: To determine what young people think about the tobacco company Philip Morris and how it affects their evaluations of the company's new television advertising.
Design: Data were gathered in the context of a controlled experiment in which participants saw four Philip Morris ads about youth smoking prevention, four Philip Morris ads about charitable works, or four Anheuser-Busch ads about preventing underage drinking (the control group). Knowledge and opinion of Philip Morris were measured before ad exposure.
Setting: A California state university in the San Francisco Bay area.
Subjects: A convenience sample of undergraduates (n = 218) aged 18–25 years.
Main outcome measures: Advertising evaluation measured by 12 semantic differential scales.
Results: A little more than half of the students knew that Philip Morris is a tobacco company. Neither this knowledge nor students' smoking status was related to their opinion of the company. Philip Morris ads were rated less favourably by students who were aware that the sponsor is a tobacco company than by students who were unaware.
Conclusions: Advertisements designed to discredit the tobacco industry typically avoid references to specific companies. This study suggests that such counter-advertising would benefit from teaching audiences about the industry's corporate identities.
Full Text
The Full Text of this article is available as a PDF (138.6 KB).
Selected References
These references are in PubMed. This may not be the complete list of references from this article.
- Austin E. W., Pinkleton B., Fujioka Y. Assessing prosocial message effectiveness: effects of message quality, production quality, and persuasiveness. J Health Commun. 1999 Jul-Sep;4(3):195–210. doi: 10.1080/108107399126913. [DOI] [PubMed] [Google Scholar]
- Biener Lois. Anti-tobacco advertisements by Massachusetts and Philip Morris: what teenagers think. Tob Control. 2002 Jun;11 (Suppl 2):ii43–ii46. doi: 10.1136/tc.11.suppl_2.ii43. [DOI] [PMC free article] [PubMed] [Google Scholar]
- Emmons K. M., Wechsler H., Dowdall G., Abraham M. Predictors of smoking among US college students. Am J Public Health. 1998 Jan;88(1):104–107. doi: 10.2105/ajph.88.1.104. [DOI] [PMC free article] [PubMed] [Google Scholar]
- Healton C. Who's afraid of the truth? Am J Public Health. 2001 Apr;91(4):554–558. doi: 10.2105/ajph.91.4.554. [DOI] [PMC free article] [PubMed] [Google Scholar]
- Rigotti N. A., Lee J. E., Wechsler H. US college students' use of tobacco products: results of a national survey. JAMA. 2000 Aug 9;284(6):699–705. doi: 10.1001/jama.284.6.699. [DOI] [PubMed] [Google Scholar]
- Sepe Edward, Glantz Stanton A. Bar and club tobacco promotions in the alternative press: targeting young adults. Am J Public Health. 2002 Jan;92(1):75–78. doi: 10.2105/ajph.92.1.75. [DOI] [PMC free article] [PubMed] [Google Scholar]
- Wechsler H., Rigotti N. A., Gledhill-Hoyt J., Lee H. Increased levels of cigarette use among college students: a cause for national concern. JAMA. 1998 Nov 18;280(19):1673–1678. doi: 10.1001/jama.280.19.1673. [DOI] [PubMed] [Google Scholar]