Ralph Borland
A division of a major advertising agency has been contracted by cigarette giant Rothmans to create a brand aimed at a new generation of smokers: 18 to 24-year-olds.
Insiders at Ogilvy & Mather Rightford Searle-Tripp Makin say the Cape Town- based advertising agency took up a multi- million contract to market brands owned by Rothmans.
It caused “quite a stink” within the firm, which has an internal non-smoking policy decided by employees.
But the agency has been tasked not only with marketing Rothmans’s existing brands; it also has to develop a new brand aimed at the barely legal 18 to 24-year-old market segment.
Ogilvy & Mather gave the project to students at the Red and Yellow School of Advertising, part of the agency.
The lecturer in charge of this project, Brian Searle-Tripp, expressed surprise that “Ogilvy & Mather are going public on this” when approached for details. In fact, Ogilvy & Mather is reluctant to disclose the existence of the campaign. Responding to a request for an interview with Ogilvy & Mather’s creative director in charge of the campaign, business director Neil Hamman said through a secretary that the marketing of a new cigarette brand had been “hypothetical” and proposed by “junior members” in the past.
After consulting with Ogilvy & Mather superiors, Searle-Tripp rescinded an initial offer to show “some of the ideas students have come up with so far”, refused an interview, and would no longer acknowledge the existence of the campaign. Rothmans’s advertising department did not respond to inquiries.
Though, as an Ogilvy & Mather employee explained, “no project is concrete until it has been completed”, the youth brand campaign has gone far beyond a “hypothetical” level.
Students at the Red and Yellow School work on real and imaginary projects. As with all their “real” or “live” advertising campaigns, students were asked to keep details of the Rothmans campaign confidential.
Katherine Everett, the health promotions director for the Cancer Association of South Africa, said the campaign is clear evidence that the tobacco industry specifically targets young people.
“This is something they consistently deny, but which has already been proven through court cases in the United States,” she said.
“We will use this news [of youth-directed marketing] to strengthen our case in lobbying the government for a ban on all cigarette advertising,” said a Cancer Association representative.
The Ministry of Health is sympathetic to its cause: the continued promotion of smoking entails huge health care costs to the country.