This is Chapter 7 of my new book, working title “The Industry Playbook: Corporate Cartels, Corruption and Crimes Against Humanity” that is being published online chapter by chapter.

One of the key strategies is to propagate information that suits your agenda while making it appear to come from independent and authoritative sources. That is what front groups are for. It is a tried-and-true PR method, which is why you must always follow the money.

To properly show this power imagine an organization says that tobacco doesn’t cause disease.

1. If the tobacco companies said it themselves, you would see it as self-serving immediately.
2. If there was a standalone organization you might consider the message, even if it was funded by Big Tobacco, because you might not know how deep the conflicts go.
3. If that organization was truly independent, then you would rightfully consider the message.

The tricky part is that the funding is very often obfuscated. And it can quickly become complicated to hide such connections. The PR effort is always to appear truly independent, especially today. But remember, Big Tobacco were pioneers in this method. Early on it was quite a bit more direct.

In November of 1953 R.J. Reynolds formed a “Bureau of Scientific Information” to “combat the propaganda which is being directed at the tobacco industry.” Two months later, the industry announced the creation of the Tobacco Industry Research Committee (TIRC). Hill & Knowlton recognized that a joint effort would work better.

Notice the names of these organizations. Bureau of Scientific Information. Tobacco Industry Research Committee. Science was really coming into its own around this time. These organizations used the authority of science within the names of the organization. This was a way of seizing credibility just from the name itself.

Imagine if one of these organizations had been named the Tobacco Industry Propaganda Committee. This would be more accurate to what they did, which is exactly why it would never be named as such.

Science is just one of the areas where a group can advocate for. In 1964 the TIRC changed its name to the Council for Tobacco Research (CTR). And in 1966 CTR had a Special Projects program. This included establishing “expert scientific witnesses who will testify on behalf of the industry in legislative halls, in litigations, at scientific meetings, and before the press and public.” In other words, those front groups require front people.

These advocacy front groups can be used in a multitude of ways. For instance, “Philip Morris helped fund the National Smokers’ Alliance (NSA), a ‘grassroots’ organization created with the assistance of the PR firm Burson-Marsteller (BM) to advocate smokers’ rights and oppose smoking restrictions,” writes Brandt. “Claiming some three million members, NSA sought to promote a pro-smoking agenda ‘unlinked’ to the industry. But it soon became clear that the NSA was a front for industry interests.”

BM ran newspapers ads to recruit members. They setup a toll-free number. They paid telemarketers and canvassers. And they published a member’s newsletter. In 1995 the NSA claimed a membership of 3 million people. However, less than 1% of it’s funding came from members. The rest came from BM via Big Tobacco. In fact, the NSA was headed up by a vice president of BM.

This is what is known as astroturf, as in fake grassroots. The power of a grassroots organization, where there are real people that are passionate about something and try to change legislation and the like can sometimes make real change. For instance, in 1973, campaigning by real grassroots organization Arizonans Concerned About Smoking, founded by Betty Carnes, led to Arizona being the first state within the USA to pass a law restricting smoking in public places.

Recognizing this, Big Tobacco and others have weaponized the idea of grassroots by building and funding front groups of this nature.

Campaigns & Elections magazine described astroturf as “grassroots program that involves the instant manufacturing of public support for a point of view in which either uninformed activists are recruited or means of deception are used to recruit them.”

“The whole point of astroturf is to try to give the impression there’s widespread support for or against an agenda when there’s not. Astroturf seeks to manipulate you into changing your opinion by making you feel as if you’re an outlier when you’re not,” says award winning investigative journalist Sharyl Attkisson.

The key to good astroturf is to make it appear independent and real. In fact, PR agencies will talk about real grassroots, when all they mean by that is astroturf that appears real. Sometimes they rope people in through the weaponization of values discussed earlier.  

In 1988, the tobacco companies were up against a new threat, secondhand smoke. So, they formed the Center for Indoor Air Research (CIAR) to deflect blame from secondhand smoke onto other indoor air pollutants. A memo mentions this strategy:

1. Mobilize all scientific studies of indoor air quality (i.e., radon, wood stoves, gas stoves, formaldehyde, asbestos, etc.) into a general indictment of the air we breathe indoors. Use a scientific front—especially some liberal Nader group.
2. Use this material to fuel PR offensive on poor indoor air quality.

When they talk specifically about “scientific fronts” you can be sure it’s about advancing an agenda, not actually doing real science. Reflect on how this amounts to pollution of the scientific commons.

Brandt writes, “In a review of more than one hundred scientific review articles about ETS [environmental tobacco smoke] that appeared between 1980 and 1995, researchers found that 37 percent concluded that ETS was not a risk to human health. Three-quarters of these articles were authored by scientists with ties to the tobacco industry, many through CIAR.”

You may not be able to completely control the scientific conversation, but you definitely can influence it and muddy the waters.

Philip Morris, along with PR Firm APCO Associations, established a “sound science” coalition aimed at improving science by rooting out “junk science”. This included aims to revise the standards of scientific proof, so that harms of secondhand smoke were impossible to prove as causative. They initiated a campaign, “Good Epidemiological Practices.” An internal memo said this was “to impede adverse legislation.”

Notice that they tried to influence how science itself was conducted to benefit themselves.

Also note these words. Sound science. Junk science. These are nothing more than PR labels that are thrown about in order to control what paid attention to and what should not. This goes back to smear campaigns. In this case they smear the science itself in addition to the person. Sadly, these labels do work on many.

If a scientist, “skeptic”, or politician is saying we have sound science here and any other science that says the opposite is junk, you might just flip that around. Invert it because it is often a case of projection.

These are just some of the front groups established by Big Tobacco to control the messaging. And forming new groups is only part of the strategy. The other part involves the influence of those organizations that already exist, which we turn to next.

Key Takeaways on Advocacy Front Groups

• Just like you shouldn’t judge a book by its cover, you shouldn’t judge an organization by its name. First and foremost, the names of such front groups are created to look and sound credible to assist in PR efforts.
• An astroturf organization is one that is specifically meant to look like it is grassroots, meaning that the public started it and is being active in its efforts to cause change. But setting up astroturf is something that PR firms specialize in because the method works.
• The power of such front groups comes from them looking like independent and grassroots efforts, while having the bankrolling of industry. Compare this to real grassroots that typically are bootstrapped and funding only by donations.
• Front groups require front people. These people are utilized in the media, in courts, in politics, in science and anywhere they can be useful, with the support of the groups behind them.
• Front groups are used to hire scientists and promote science that is helpful to the industry’s agenda. Sadly, the phrases “sound science” and “junk science” are nothing more than PR labels thrown around to lend credibility to industry science and smear any opposition.
• When looking at any group you need to look at the funding of it. Sometimes it is hidden away and you can’t even find details. Sometimes it is mostly upfront. Still more times it is hidden in a web of multiple front groups to obfuscate where the money starts from.

Please leave any comments or questions below. Feel free to share it with anyone you’d like.

Links to all published chapters of The Industry Playbook can be found here.

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This is Chapter 6 of my new book, working title “The Industry Playbook: Corporate Cartels, Corruption and Crimes Against Humanity” that is being published online chapter by chapter.

In addition to promoting your own science and agenda via all the available avenues of PR, it is important to play defense. A huge part of this defense is to smear or discredit anyone that has a message contrary to your own. This is one of the major strategies involved in public relations as it skews how the public (and professionals) see those that stand up against industry.

If you can’t bully the facts, you can at least bully the person that shares those facts. This technique is so common that it is hard not to see it.

Of course, some people should not have credit, thus looking at any case, it can be tough to sort through purposeful and illegitimate smears vs. legitimate criticism. And that is exactly why this technique works so well. (A helpful hint to tell the difference is that smears target the person while good criticism targets the facts and logic presented instead.)

Back in 1933, tobacco researcher Emil Bogen argued, “Any substance so widely and commonly used as the cigarette cannot be as dangerous and deleterious as the propaganda of the more fanatical ’no-tobacco’ advocates might lead one to infer.”

This was early on but notice that anyone against the pro-tobacco position was engaged in “propaganda” and “fanatical.” This kind of name calling is common. Labelling your enemy with negative terms helps to control the perspective. It puts them in a box with a tag on it.

It’s also a case of projection because they often say the exact opposite of what is true.

Here’s an example of this. Brandt writes, “Perhaps the most notorious known case was that of pathologist Freddy Homburger, whose Cambridge-based Microbiological Associates had been retained to conduct experiments on hamsters exposed to smoke. Homburger and his colleagues found precancerous lesions similar to earlier research conducted by pathologist Oscar Auerbach on beagles. But when he submitted the draft paper to CTR [Center for Tobacco Research], Hockett raised a series of objections, requesting that he substitute medical euphemisms to describe the characteristic malignant lesions; Hockett advised that he use the term pseudoepithieliomatous hyperplasia. When Homburger refused, he was notified that CTR would no longer fund his work. Further, they enlisted publicist Leonard Zahn (formerly of Hill & Knowlton) to attempt to discredit him.”

Think of it like this for any industry funded science:

1. Pay for science, get the results you want. This may be true or it may be from designing the scientific trial for success in the first place. Obviously, this is the ideal outcome for industry.
   
2. If the science doesn’t suit your agenda, then at least you can erase, downplay, somehow obfuscate the findings. In many cases this uses the “file drawer effect”, meaning the science isn’t published just put into the file drawer. Many scientists will play along with this as you’re paying them, and they might not have the power to get it published themselves. This is not great for industry, but it is also not damaging.
   
3. Some scientists, those with strong ethics that can’t be bought like Homburger, will not play along. That’s where threats and action come in for damage control. You fire them. You smear them.

There is a key point of number three that goes beyond damage control. This action reinforces numbers one and two for other scientists. Big Tobacco discussed the power of their smears so much themselves.

In 1987, Philip Morris held a conference known as Project Down Under. One theme discussed at the conference was “Make It Hurt.” Noted in the conference minutes was, “Let pols know down side of anti activity. To do this, we take on vulnerable candidates, beat him/her, let people know we did it.”

Let me reiterate, we beat people and let others know we did it! There is a downside to going up against power. Everyone knows this. And that is why few people actually do it.

In the 80’s and 90’s Big Tobacco was battling the idea that secondhand smoke (known as environmental tobacco smoke or ETS) was dangerous. According to The Verdict is In, Big Tobacco had “the ETS Consultancy Program to attack and discredit the scientific consensus and underlying evidence.”

In the words of Brown & Williamson counsel Kendrick Wells: “The consultants groups’ operation is essentially a public relations program, not a scientific operation.”

One of the biggest whistleblowers of Big Tobacco, executive and scientist Jeffrey Wigand was put through the ringer. A 500-page dossier that Brown & Williamson had private investigators put together sought to discredit Wigand when he testified in court and on camera for 60 Minutes. This is also known as “opposition research.”

Many news organizations ran with this “intel”. The Wall Street Journal dug in deeper finding that “many of the serious allegations against Mr. Wigand are backed by scant or contradictory evidence. Some of the charges — including that he pleaded guilty to shoplifting — are demonstrably untrue.”

PR executive Pamela Whitney said, “the key to winning anything is opposition research.” And that is why smearing and discrediting is a key play in the Tobacco Playbook. The idea is to boost up your positive messages, while downplaying anything that runs counter to your message. This is war and you better make sure there are casualties on the other side. Make it hurt!

Key Takeaways on Smear Campaigns

• In science you will have a body of competing ideas. PR involves the boosting up of your own “pro” message while downplaying the “anti” message. This is not how the ideal of science works, that is following the evidence. But it is exactly how the game of PR is played.
• Industry funded research would often find the results they were looking for. Or at least poor results could be erased or downplayed. Only in a few instances did such scientists stand up against their employers where they would be fired and smeared.
• Smearing people not only discredits them but helps to keep others in line because they’re made aware of what will happen if they stand up against power. The more they “make it hurt” the more they can bully others into submission.
• Opposition research is one of the main components of the Industry Playbook as it is key to any smear campaign.

Please leave any comments or questions below. Feel free to share it with anyone you’d like.

Links to all published chapters of The Industry Playbook can be found here.

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This is Chapter 5 of my new book, working title “The Industry Playbook: Corporate Cartels, Corruption and Crimes Against Humanity” that is being published online chapter by chapter.

Science has basically become a religion in the modern age. In many ways science has come to replace any form of deity as the arbiter of truth. Getting into all the implications, for good or ill, of what this means is beyond the scope of this chapter. Rather I point this out to show that “religious belief” in science itself exists.

This area is subject to fundamentalism as much as religions themselves. What’s worse is that scientists and skeptics tend to be even more blind than religious zealots due to thinking that they are completely rational, and therefore above and beyond such things.

Science needs to be debatable. What we’re seeing right now is more censorship of what real scientific debate should be. And that is largely because corporate controls of science have become even stronger than back in Big Tobacco’s day.

There absolutely was a time when the harms of smoking tobacco were not known scientifically. But the fact that Big Tobacco could weaponize natural and healthy scientific skepticism, twisting it into constant denial while knowing the truth of the matter is a big problem. 

Conducting high quality science is difficult enough without the profit motive intervening! But when we add that to the mix, well, that is how we arrive where we are today.

Brandt writes “The tobacco industry’s PR campaign permanently changed both science and public culture.” Think about that for a minute. The culture at large. Science at large. Recognize the impacts were not just regarding tobacco but setting precedent for every other big industry. Anyone with the money and power to do so could similarly seek to control scientific opinion. And so they did. 

The aim of this chapter is two-fold. First is to give you a clear idea of the science that was coming out that showed the harms of tobacco smoke and how early this occurred. Secondly, is to show that the tobacco companies recognized these truths but fought against it tooth and nail. This is clearly shown from their own private internal research juxtaposed with their public positions.

This may read like a laundry list of science, but I feel it is necessary to give you enough of an overview of how the science developed and was influenced.

There were signs of the dangers of tobacco smoke scientifically as early as 1928 when a New England Journal of Medicine study found a 27% increase of overall cancer rates among heavy smokers.

In 1930, an Argentinian scientist, Ángel Roffo, found polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons, known carcinogens, in tobacco tar.

Dr. James J. Walsh summarized the current medical opinion in 1937 that once rare diseases were becoming fairly common.

Then in 1938, Raymond Pearl, an eminent John Hopkins biologist, found, “the smoking of tobacco was statistically associated with the impairment of life duration, and the amount of this impairment increased as the habitual amount of smoking increased.” This was the first science showing dose-dependent detrimental health effects.

In 1940, scientists found tobacco smoke exposure lowered birth weight and hindered growth and development in pregnant rats.

None of these studies conclusively “proved” tobacco smoke was harmful. But the case was being built.

In 1950, the science really started to solidify. In May of that year, JAMA published a paper by Wynder and Graham, “Tobacco Smoking as a Possible Etiologic Factor in Bronchiogenic Carcinoma: A Study of 684 Proved Cases.” Then in September, Doll and Hill published in the BMJ, “Smoking and Carcinoma of the Lung: Preliminary Report,” the first ever retrospective study. They calculated a statistical significance of 0.00000064 that smoking caused lung cancer, that is their findings had less than one in a million chance of being random.

Brandt writes, “[M]odern epidemiology was constructed around the problem of determining the harms of smoking…As more studies accrued, so too did medical and public confidence in the conclusion. This aggregative process marked a significant difference in scientific epistemology from the traditional notions of individual investigators ‘making’ scientific ‘discoveries.’ In epidemiology, discovery and proof were iterative, as no specific experimental situation could be precisely replicated. Researchers now sought to take advantage of this variability; ‘consistency’ across multiple studies would become another criterion for defining causality.”

In February 1953, a R.J. Reynolds scientist, Claude Teague, wrote in an internal memo, “Studies of clinical data tend to confirm the relationship between heavy and prolonged tobacco smoking and incidence of cancer of the lung.” Later that year, in December, Wynder, Graham and Croninger published mouse experiments in Cancer Research giving strong biological plausibility for smoking causing cancer.  

This is when Big Tobacco came together to mount a defense. They formed the Tobacco Industry Research Committee (TIRC). As previously mentioned they released a paper titled A Scientific Perspective on the Cigarette Controversy. The thing is this paper didn’t actually contain any new science, instead being just eighteen pages of quotes from doctors and scientists doubting the link.

Part of the TIRC was the Scientific Advisory Board (SAB). Clarence Cook Little was elected to its chair. He was a eugenicist who believed cancer was exclusively hereditary. In other words, he had an ideological position that cigarettes couldn’t be the cause. To him cigarettes were innocent and could never be proven guilty. Therefore, he was the perfect scientific front man for Big Tobacco.

In November of 1954, the first grants from the TIRC went out to scientists. These mostly focused on trying to find how cancer was linked to anything besides tobacco smoke.

The TIRC pointed their scientific lens where it would benefit them. Cancer was looked at via genetics or other environmental risks. No statistical or epidemiological science was done. Almost no direct research looked at cigarettes.

In 1970, Helmut Wakeham, director of R&D at Philip Morris, would explain it as such, “Let’s face it. We are interested in evidence which we believe denies the allegation that cigarette smoking causes disease.”

With cigarettes and cancer, it wasn’t easy to see a cause-and-effect relationship. You don’t smoke a single cigarette and get cancer. Instead, the science became solidified over time because of clinical observations, population studies and laboratory experiments. All of these were different layers of evidence. Yet, Big Tobacco dismissed it all as mere statistics. They smeared the science itself.

Still more scientific evidence continued to mount. In 1956, Doll and Hill published “Lung Cancer and Other Causes of Death in Relation to Smoking: A Second Report on the Mortality of British Doctors.” This found smokers had death rates 24 times higher than nonsmokers.

In 1957, pathologist Oscar Auerbach published research in the NEJM looking at precancerous changes to lung tissue in autopsies of 30,000 deceased patients with smoking histories.

That same year, scientists from American Cancer Society, American Heart Association, National Cancer Institute, and the National Heart Institute looked at the data and concluded: “The sum total of scientific evidence establishes beyond reasonable doubt that cigarette smoking is a causative factor in the rapidly increasing incidence of human epidermoid carcinoma of the lung…The evidence of a cause-effect relationship is adequate for considering the initiation of public health measures.”

To this, Dr. Little responded, “The Scientific Advisory Board questions the existence of sufficient definitive evidence to establish a simple cause-and-effect explanation of the complex problem of lung cancer.” This is no explanation instead just explaining the evidence away.

Big Tobacco continued to fight against the science. That same year, internal documents at British American Tobacco referred to cancer only in code words. “Tobacco smoke contains a substance or substances which may cause ZEPHYR.” They didn’t even dare use its name internally for fear of the documents getting out as they eventually did.

In 1958, members from the Tobacco Manufacturers Standing Committee, the British counterpart to the TIRC, visited the US to look at industry-related science. They wrote, “The majority of individuals whom we met accepted that beyond all reasonable doubt cigarette smoke most probably acts as a direct though very weak carcinogen on the human lung. The opinion was given that in view of its chemical composition it would indeed be surprising if cigarette smoke were not carcinogenic. This undoubtedly represents the majority but by no means the unanimous opinion of scientists in the U.S.A.” That same year, the TIRC drafted “Another Frank Statement to Smokers.” Despite the internal scientific conclusions, the PR firm wrote “The cause of cancer remains as much a mystery as ever.”

The PR campaign worked wonderfully. By 1960, the “scientific controversy” about tobacco causing cancer was widely debated in the media and by the public.

Again, all we have to do is compare what they were talking about internally with their external messaging. For example, in 1961, Philip Morris director of research and development, Helmut Wakeham listed 15 carcinogens and 24 “tumor promoters” in cigarette smoke. He also found, of the more than 400 compounds in cigarette smoke, 84% of them are present in secondhand smoke. Meanwhile TIRC was putting out statements saying, “Chemical tests have not found any substance in tobacco smoke known to cause human cancer.”

In 1963, James C. Bowling, vice president and director of Philip Morris, said “We believe there is no connection or we wouldn’t be in the business.”

In 1964, the Surgeon General’s report was released stating, “No reasonable person should dispute that cigarette smoking is a serious health hazard.” This was after two years of investigation from a committee under Surgeon General Luther Terry.

“Without these efforts [to control the scientific narrative], the harms of smoking would have been uniformly accepted by medical science long before the 1964 surgeon general’s report,” Brandt writes. “Given the definitive findings of the surgeon general’s report, the cigarette companies were forced to redouble their efforts to maintain the smoke screen of ‘scientific controversy’ and ‘uncertainty.’ They quickly developed a policy, developed by their legal staffs, to neither deny nor confirm the findings. In public, they continued to insist on the need for more research; the ‘merely statistical’ nature of the surgeon general’s conclusion.”

Fortunately, their public messaging began to get weaker in those regards. The public began to see through their tricks and accepted the cancer link. But the scientific and PR battlefront moved elsewhere, mostly to secondhand smoke, as well as the addictiveness of cigarettes.

Their internal researchers knew about the dangers of secondhand smoke before anyone in the public was talking about it too.

In 1967, Philip Abelson, editor of Science, implicated cigarette smoke as “a serious contributor to air pollution” which can affect not just the smoker but those nearby.

In 1981, epidemiologist Takeshi Hirayama of the Tokyo National Cancer Research Institute found that wives of smokers and ex-smokers had increased rates of lung cancer in a dose-response relationship to exposure. That same year, the National Academy of Sciences committee on indoor air pollutants directed attention to indoor cigarette smoke.

In 1983, a legal memo from a law firm working for Philip Morris quotes researchers Victor DeNoble and Paul Mele in their paper “Nicotine as a Positive Reinforcer in Rats” that “their overall results are extremely unfavorable” that “research such as this strengthens the adverse case against nicotine as an addictive drug.”

In 1986, a National Academy of Sciences report showed that children of smokers were twice as likely to suffer from respiratory infections, pneumonia, and bronchitis as children of non-smokers. This report estimated that environmental tobacco smoke (ETS) caused between 2,500 and 8,400 lung cancer deaths per year.

Big Tobacco criticized these findings and got to work. In 1988 the tobacco companies formed Center for Indoor Air Research (CIAR) a front group to deflect blame from secondhand smoke onto other indoor air pollutants.

In 1993, Philip Morris, along with PR Firm APCO Associations, established a “sound science” coalition aimed at improving science by rooting out “junk science”. This included aims to revise the standards of scientific proof, so that harms of secondhand smoke were impossible to prove as causative. 

Another Surgeon General’s report, released in May 1988, focused on the addictiveness of smoking, specifically from nicotine.

In 1994, ABC’s Day One news program featured “Deep Cough” a whistleblower from R.J. Reynolds saying that tobacco companies knowingly added more nicotine to cigarettes to increase addictiveness. Yet Big Tobacco continued to deny anything negative about their product.

In April of 1994, chief executives of the top seven tobacco companies appeared before a Congressional subcommittee headed by Henry Waxman. They all stated that tobacco was not addictive nor that they manipulated nicotine levels in cigarettes. Lorillard CEO Andrew Tisch said, “We have looked at the data and the data that we have been able to see has all been statistical data that has not convinced me that smoking causes death.” R.J. Reynolds CEO James W. Johnston said, “Cigarette smoking is no more addictive than coffee, tea or Twinkies.”

This was not an exhaustive list of all the science that came out, nor all the efforts of tobacco to fight against it. But it should be sufficient to show that science was heavily influenced, maybe not in the minds of many of the experts themselves, but certainly in the public battlefield.

What were the results of this seeking to control of science? How many deaths are directly attributable to this manipulation of science, year after year, decade after decade?

That would be a hard number to calculate. An easier number to find is the millions upon millions in profits for the tobacco companies for acting in this way. Science clearly can be bought, if not completely, at least to a large enough degree to matter.

Key Takeaways on Influencing Science

• There absolutely was a time when the dangers of smoking weren’t knowing scientifically. But the first hints began in 1928 and the evidence was very compelling by the early 50’s.
• The full picture is grasped when you compare what Big Tobacco’s internal research documentation showed as opposed to their public opinions. With that you know the difference between science and PR.
• Internal research in the tobacco companies was often ahead of public research. For instance, Big Tobacco scientists knew about the dangers of secondhand smoke before anyone else was talking about it.
• When scientific proof of the dangers of smoking was overwhelming, Big Tobacco’s policy changed to neither confirming nor denying it, while they continued to deny the science of secondhand smoke dangers and addictiveness of nicotine.
• Tactics of influencing science involve:
  • Smearing the scientists that come out with research implicating tobacco
  • Smearing the science itself as merely statistical or insufficient evidence
  • Not publishing any internal science you’ve conducted that would be damaging
  • Doing research in areas that can’t possibly hurt your agenda, such as studying other causes of cancer
  • Publishing any science that fits the agenda, then promoting it far and wide through the network of media contacts
  • Influencing journalism by always insisting there are two sides
  • Utilizing front groups and networks at institutions to push the agenda forward

Please leave any comments or questions below. Feel free to share it with anyone you’d like.

Links to all published chapters of The Industry Playbook can be found here.

You can also support this project with a tip.

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This is Chapter 4 of my new book, working title “The Industry Playbook: Corporate Cartels, Corruption and Crimes Against Humanity” that is being published online chapter by chapter.

Advertising is just one of a multi-pronged strategy to influence people. And of that it is considered the lowest, and possibly least impactful ways by propagandists such as Edward Bernays. He wrote in his book, Propaganda:

“The conscious and intelligent manipulation of the organized habits and opinions of the masses is an important element in democratic society. Those who manipulate this unseen mechanism of society constitute an invisible government which is the true ruling power of our country. We are governed, our minds are molded, our tastes formed, and our ideas suggested, largely by men we have never heard of…. It is they who pull the wires that control the public mind.”

This is because people know that companies that advertise want to influence them. Meanwhile, PR is purposefully more covert. It aims to influence, and does so best, by being hidden behind-the-scenes and thus keeping your defenses down.

PR is where the majority of the Tobacco Playbook lies because of how it successfully influences the opinions of people in covert ways.

It was in the 1920s that Liggett & Myers, followed by American Tobacco, hired Bernays. He worked for them for many years. The “Reach for a Lucky Instead of a Sweet” campaign was spearheaded by Bernays.

In 1929, Bernays proposed the Tobacco Information Service Bureau, a PR arm for American Tobacco. Finding that it was mostly only men that smoked, Bernays sought to increase the female market. He launched the “torches of freedom” campaign in order to get women to smoke in public. How so? By tying cigarettes to women’s liberation. In the Eastern Day Parade Bernays made sure photographers were there to capture women smoking.

He expected controversy from the campaign, which he then used to get more publicity. The result was that women began to smoke almost as much as men.

Bernays would use surveys not just to measure public opinion, but artfully to shape it. He led the charge of getting cigarettes used in film.

“Persuasion, by its definition, is subtle,” says a PR executive quoted in Toxic Sludge is Good for You. “The best PR ends up looking like news. You never know when a PR agency is being effective; you’ll just find your views slowly shifting.”

Just how far can propaganda go? In 1934, Lucky Strikes were packaged in green, which as a color was out of fashion. Bernays set out on a six-month campaign to make green the fashionable color.

While it is tougher to gauge the success of this campaign, the fact that such a thing was even attempted shows the power of propaganda. Based on previous successes, Bernays had the audacity to attempt such a thing. Look at the thinking behind this. We’re going to make green a more fashionable color…to unconsciously sell more Lucky Strike cigarettes that come in a green package.

In 1935, American Tobacco developed the legendary musical variety show, Your Hit Parade. This show had a 24-year run on the radio, and a ten-year run on TV in the 50’s. The whole time, it was sponsored by Lucky Strike Cigarettes.

Influencing the public at large was only part of the effort. As negative science started to come to light it became more important to focus propaganda on doctors and scientists.

In 1947, the American Medical Association convention had doctors forming long lines to get free cigarettes. Big Tobacco’s cozy relationship would go on for many years.  This Camel advertisement was in the 1950 issue of the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA). Part of the purpose of advertising was to incentivize useful editorial as we saw before.

Former president and CEO of Hill & Knowlton, Robert Dilenschneider admitted “the notion that business and editorial decisions in the press and media are totally separate is largely a myth.”

Once again it was December of 1953 when the Big Tobacco executives got together in New York to discuss the pressing situation. President of Brown & Williamson, T.V. Hartnett, wrote a memo regarding this secretive meeting of their aims. “Cancer research, while certainly getting our every support, can be only half an answer…The other side of the coin is public relations…Finally, one of the roughest hurdles which must be anticipated is how to handle significantly negative research results, if, as, and when they develop.” And this is when the PR firm Hill & Knowlton was hired by the group.

At the start of the next year, Hill & Knowlton published “A Frank Statement to Cigarette Smokers” in 448 newspapers across 258 cities on behalf of their clients. This was purely a PR piece, to shape the minds of the public that Big Tobacco was on their side and would get to the bottom of the science. And doing so garnered a positive response.

This statement announced the creation Tobacco Industry Research Committee (TIRC). While engaged in science, this really was nothing more than a wing of the PR firm. Throughout 1954, the TIRC budget was almost $1 million. Almost all of this money went to Hill & Knowlton, specifically media ads and administrative costs. Very little went to research.

In April of 1954, the TIRC issued a white paper titled A Scientific Perspective on the Cigarette Controversy which is eighteen pages of quotes from doctors and scientists doubting the link between cancer and cigarettes. Over 200,000 copies were distributed to doctors and media.

A 1966 internal memo specifically said that the TIRC “was set up as an industry shield.” This memo goes on to say that “special projects were instituted at Washington University, Harvard University, and UCLA. Bill Shinn noted that the industry received a major public relations ‘plus’ when monies were given to Harvard Medical School.”

Brandt writes, “Each time the TIRC issued a press release, the Hill & Knowlton organization had initiated ‘personal contact.’ The firm systematically documented the courtship of newspapers and magazines where it could urge ‘balance and fairness’ to the industry. Hill & Knowlton staff, for instance, assisted Donald Cooley in preparing an article entitled ‘Smoke Without Fear’ for the July 1954 issue of True Magazine and then distributed more than 350,000 reprints to journalists throughout the country.”

Dr. Clarence Cook Little would head the Scientific Advisory Board (SAB) of the TIRC. In 1955, Hill & Knowlton focused on building up his and his works’ credibility.  “Hill & Knowlton operatives made Little available to editors, journalists, and others in the media. Most of these people, lacking much scientific sophistication, eagerly portrayed both sides of this ‘controversy.’ The controversy, after all, made it a story,” shares Brandt.

The SAB would complain later on. A number of these scientists warned that they were “disturbed by a misunderstanding of the relationship between the TIRC and the SAB.” That they were being used as an endorsement of everything the TIRC said. These scientists didn’t know that that was the whole point! PR came first. Science came second.

Controversy was a PR win because they could claim over and over again the science was unclear. In 1955, Edward Murrow covered the tobacco controversy in two consecutive broadcasts at CBS. Hill worked hard to make sure the coverage was a “balanced one”.

In 1958, the TIRC drafted “Another Frank Statement to Smokers.” Although science had progressed, the PR organization continued to spread doubt and skepticism regarding the science. They wrote “The cause of cancer remains as much a mystery as ever.” (Note that this line is used by many other industries today when and where their products are specifically implicated.)

By 1960, the “scientific controversy” about tobacco causing cancer was now widely debated in the media and by the public. Later on, we’ll show how clear the science actually was by this point.

Changing names of institutes is part of the PR game, once a name has bad associations. This occurred in 1964 when the TIRC became Center for Tobacco Research (CTR). In 1966, a Special Projects program of the CTR established “expert scientific witnesses who will testify on behalf of the Industry in legislative halls, in litigations, at scientific meetings, and before the press and public.”

In April 1968, Hill & Knowlton ceased working for Big Tobacco, ending it’s 15 years of running public relations. A long line of other PR firms would be worked with over the coming years.

The propaganda message, that the science was unclear, was used for decades. A 1969 memo from Brown & Williamson (B&W) reads, “Doubt is our product since it is the best means of competing with the ‘body of fact’ that exists in the mind of the general public.” How do you sell doubt? Public relations.

A wide range of organizations would be used for this. Another B&W internal memo reads, “Obviously, care must be exercised not to ‘over-commercialize’ the agreement of B&W’s association with the NAACP. However, if managed with sensitivity, this association can be linked positively to the minority buying public…Clearly, the sole reason for B&W’s interest in the black and Hispanic communities is the actual and potential sales of B&W products within these communities and the profitability of these sales.”

In other words, they give money for the advancement of minorities, but they don’t actually care about minorities. Instead, it is a PR play with the “sole reason” aimed at generating sales and customers.

The term public relations may not be the most useful. That’s because the target is not just the public but often times even more so professionals. When we see PR we need to think “professional relations” as well. As Bernays clearly stated, “If you can influence the leaders, either with or without their conscious cooperation, you automatically influence the group which they sway.”

These are all targets of a Big Tobacco’s PR over the years.

• The public at large
• Journalists
• Doctors
• Scientists
• Lawmakers/Politicians
• Organizations
• Schools

That’s one of the things that most people miss. Authority figures, such as journalists, scientists and doctors, are not above being propagandized. In fact, they often make even better targets than just the public themselves because of their authority. Successful PR to these professionals will further spread the message using their authority to do so to the rest of the public.

A great PR strategy is multi-pronged relying on a wide variety of tactics targeting a wide variety of people. When you have lots of money like Big Tobacco did you can afford such efforts. The fact that so much of the PR was successful would only mean they’d have more money to spend even more on it.

For a video presentation of this you can watch the movie Thank You For Smoking. The protagonist is a tobacco PR man played by Aaron Eckhart. This shows the art of spin at it’s very best.

Key Takeaways on Public Relations

• Edward Bernays, the father of propaganda, was hired by Big Tobacco, where many of the PR methods were put to use. This included the famous “torches of freedom” campaign which made women smoking publicly okay culturally and the “in” thing to do.
• PR is not just public relations but professional relations. A key quote from Brandt is “For Bernays, expertise was but a commodity for the PR expert to purchase and exploit.”
• PR tactics include:
  • Using public opinion surveys not just to measure public opinion, but to shape it.
  • Deny and debate scientific facts everywhere you possibly can.
  • Having PR work alongside advertising efforts.
  • Formation of organizations with helpful sounding names, such as Bureau of Scientific Information and Tobacco Industry Research Committee, that are typically nothing more than outlets of propaganda.
  • Changing the name of those organizations when they’ve acquired a poor reputation.
  • Giving money to schools and other organizations for good PR, but also to influence behavior of members of those organizations.
  • Establishing and utilizing a network of journalists that would give favorable coverage. Every bit of favorable coverage or press releases would be spread far and wide throughout the PR firm’s network.
  • Boosting the credibility and supporting authority figures, such as Dr. Little, that would spread their propaganda.
  • Making sure that no criticism or threat went unanswered.
  • Utilizing your advertising budget to influence editorial coverage.
  • Getting cigarettes used in film and elsewhere in culture. 

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Links to all published chapters of The Industry Playbook can be found here.

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When I say the word Marlboro what comes to mind? Is it that iconic cowboy, the Marlboro Man? Even though I personally only caught a minimum of tobacco advertising being born in 1985, as it slowly dwindled away, those ads are imprinted in my mind.

But did you know that Marlboro was originally a woman’s cigarette line?

“The transformation of Marlboro from a luxury women’s cigarette to a macho smoke is a testament to the sophistication of the mass marketing and promotion techniques largely invented by the tobacco industry early in the twentieth century,” writes Brandt.

Looking at tobacco ads over the span of time is a great way to understand the power (and abuse) of marketing. It gives you perspective on advertisements seen today.

Within this section you’ll find ads that touch on culture, science, sex, celebrity and so much more.

As mentioned in the previous section, it was when the “Tobacco Trust” was originally broken up that advertising exploded upwards. Back in the early part of the 1900’s is when advertising ballooned across the nation.

For example, in 1916 Lucky Strike cigarettes were introduced by American Tobacco Company. Over $100 million was spent on advertising these in their first decade alone. The other top brands spent similar amounts.

And remember $100 million back then was worth a lot more, inflated to approximately $2.4 billion to 2021.

The art and science of advertising was built up when cigarette companies were coming to dominate.

Certain ads that wouldn’t work today (especially today’s cancel culture) for a wide variety of reasons, may have been hugely successful in the past.

Witness some early tobacco advertising over the next few pages…

In 1933, Philip Morris entered the market with its namesake brand. It sought to become the cigarette of the American medical profession and ran ads advising “Ask Your Doctor about a Light Smoke.” The 30’s through early 50’s were the decades of doctors and science in advertising.

Almost all of these claims were false. For example, in 1934, Camel advertised “Get a Lift” which read, “The effect continues for approximately half an hour, when the percentage of blood sugar again goes back to the previous level. However, the smoking of another Camel will again increase the blood sugar concentration.”

Perhaps more important than the advertising itself, was the influence that came with paying millions of dollars to publishers.

For example, in 1934, Hygeia, the American Medical Association’s magazine for the public, concludes, “smoking by mothers is in all probability, not an important factor” in infant mortality. This was not in an ad but in editorial. Would this statement have been made without the cigarette advertising money that flooded the AMA?

Eventually the FTC sought to crack down especially on such “scientific” advertisements. In 1955 they issued voluntary guidelines for cigarette makers to avoid making unsubstantiated claims about nicotine or tar content of cigarettes. Five years later, these were mandated.

On TV, it was the FCC’s jurisdiction. After coming up against the FCC several times, in April of 1964, Big Tobacco announced self-regulation of their advertising with The Cigarette Advertising Code. This had little impact on changing commercials and other advertisements.

What did ultimately change television advertising? John Banzhaf, a lawyer, asked the FCC to apply the “fairness doctrine” to cigarette advertising in 1967. This FCC policy required broadcasters to present both sides of controversial issues of public importance in a manner that was deemed honest, equitable, and balanced. The FCC granted a mandate of one antismoking message for every three TV commercials.

These ads proved to lower cigarette consumption. Big Tobacco did not like this and sought to stop it from happening. But they couldn’t. In February of 1969, the FCC issued a public notice that it would seek a ban on all broadcast cigarette advertising.

And in January of 1971, Big Tobacco pulled all advertising off television. The previous year they had bought 8% of all TV advertising, spending $230 million (equivalent of $1.485 billion today). Much of this money got transferred into print media and point-of-sale promotion. Advertising in these other places still proved effective.

Along with the type of ads, Big Tobacco would find out how to target demographics. For example, in 1987 a survey revealed that black neighborhoods had three times as many cigarette billboards as white neighborhoods as this was a highly sought demographic.

A researcher for Camel wrote, “Advertising will be developed with the objective of convincing target smokers that by selecting CAMEL as their usual brand they will enhance their acceptance among peers…Aspiration to be perceived as cool/a member of the in-group is one of the strongest influences affecting the behavior of younger adult smokers. This approach will capitalize on the ubiquitous nature of Marlboro by repositioning it as the epitome of conformity, versus CAMEL the smoke of the cool/in group.”

The company behind Camel cigarettes, R.J. Reynolds, used its advertising budget for promotions and premiums. My father was pretty much a lifelong smoker quitting many times only to restart later. I asked him why he smoked Camels. When he was younger, they gave away free packs at a stockcar racing event he was at. In my father’s case this free giveaway earned a lifelong customer.

I also remember as a kid the “Camel Cash” that my dad collected. This could be redeemed for items from a catalog. I remember looking through the catalog myself, and the various branded goods we had like a big beach towel, cups, hats and more.

Overall, advertising by itself was not what made Big Tobacco what they were. In fact, it was one of the minor pieces involved.

Key Takeaways on Advertising

• Big Tobacco were pioneers in celebrity endorsements, appeals to authority, image advertising and much more in the field.
• Almost all of these ads would later be seen as morally repugnant, full of deceit or in many cases actually become illegal. Over time Big Tobacco became extremely restricted in what they could advertise and where they could do it.
• All the scientific claims used in cigarette advertising were dubious. This shouldn’t come as a big surprise based on their manipulation of science. In advertising, science was used not to share the truth but because it could help peddle cigarettes.
• R.J. Reynolds, the company behind Camel cigarettes, would later be found guilty of targeting children with their Joe Camel ads. They weren’t the only ones. The underage smoker was the most highly coveted smoker despite being illegal because many smokers would be lifelong.
• Advertising is not just about advertising, but the influence it gains by spending large amounts of money. Journals, magazines, news programs would all come under influence in their editorial content due to Big Tobacco’s advertising budget.

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Links to all published chapters of The Industry Playbook can be found here.

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The Sherman Anti-Trust Act was passed in the US in 1890. The purpose of this was to reign in the power of companies that became too powerful. With that power they could stop competitors in unfair ways. The government meant to be a check against the excesses of the marketplace.

The ironic thing is that monopoly power ultimately is used to manipulate anti-monopoly legislation and even judicial power. In other words, the power that comes with profits influences those that would seek to check it.

(And it is useful to understand that the size and reach of monopolies back then is dwarfed by multinational companies today, wherever monopoly power is discussed.)

In 1890, James Buchanan Duke forced the other four major tobacco producers to join a group called the American Tobacco Company. Duke led this $25 million capitalized consortium. This was known as the “Tobacco Trust” and claimed 90% of cigarette sales in the US.

Further, in 1901, Duke joined with Imperial Tobacco in the UK creating British American Tobacco to cement worldwide tobacco control.

It was these companies joining that led to the Department of Justice indicting American Tobacco in violation of the Sherman Antitrust Act in 1907.

But understand that around this time the Tobacco Trust now had $350 million in assets. What do you do with that kind of money? You wield it to prevent others from taking the power you have obtained as you gobble up even more.

After four years in the courts, in May of 1911, the Supreme Court found American Tobacco was in violation of the Antitrust Act. They ordered the trust dissolved. This led to negotiations on exactly how this would be done over the following months.

Journalist Louis Brandeis closely followed the case. He wrote that American Tobacco was to be divided into “three parts to be owned by the same persons in the same proportions and to be controlled by the same individuals who the Supreme Court held to have combined in violation of the [anti-trust] law…It is inconceivable that even a decision rendered by able and upright judges can make the American people believe that such a ‘disintegration’ will restore ‘honest’ competition.” He wrote that this was, “An illegal trust legalized.”

Prices of cigarettes did not change. The only thing that really changed was that advertising by the cigarette companies exploded upwards. That is covered in the next section.

But let’s fast forward in time. In 1941, Big Tobacco was found in violation of the Sherman Antitrust Act again for price fixing.

This is an important element to recognize. While competition is very apparent with advertising, there is cooperation going on in other aspects. Price fixing, where the companies agree not to compete on price, as it would cause a race to the bottom, is one common area. But there are others cooperative areas crucial to the Big Tobacco story.  

In December of 1953, as science showing harms of smoking was solidifying, tobacco company executives met at the Plaza Hotel in New York City to discuss actions to counteract this scientific evidence. As a group, they hired public relations firm Hill & Knowlton, the most influential PR firm in the USA. 

Hill & Knowlton led to the publishing in January 1954 of “A Frank Statement to Cigarette Smokers” in 448 newspapers across 258 cities. This PR piece assured people that Big Tobacco was taking the research seriously and would thoroughly investigate it. For this, they announced the creation of the Tobacco Industry Research Committee (TIRC).

As Brandt wrote, “Even as the companies continued to vie for market share among their respective brands, it was imperative that their in-house public relations offices present a united front in the critical domain of health and science.”

And this is the official start of Big Tobacco seeking control over scientific opinion. They operated as a monopoly in this area. As a monopoly is often thought of as a single company, and here we had a group of them, the term cartel might be a better fit. This plan continued with a wide variety of other joint organizations, such as the Tobacco Institute, a lobbying organization established in 1958.

Another example from 1981 is when Philip Morris, R.J. Reynolds and Brown & Williamson joined together to form the Cigarette Export Association, a non-profit trade association “to improve the competitive position” in foreign markets.

Yes, there was competition in advertising and getting people to pick brands. But cooperation in all other endeavors that would expand the overall marketplace. This was not merely providing the desired supply but manufacturing demand.

There certainly were many challenges along the way. In 1964, the FTC was going against Big Tobacco regarding their advertising. At this time, Big Tobacco executives agreed to let attorney Thomas Austern of Covington & Burling represent them all in the case.

Here we see another place that cooperation reigned, within the legal realm. This was equal to science in the amount of teamwork seen from this cartel.

With that threat against them, in April of 1964, Big Tobacco announced self-regulation of their advertising with The Cigarette Advertising Code. The monopoly watched itself! As you might guess, this had little impact on changing commercials and other advertisements.

In 1965 the FTC required label on packages saying “Caution: cigarette smoking is dangerous to health and may cause death from cancer and other diseases.” This was from the passage of the Federal Cigarette Labeling and Advertising Act of 1965, heavily lobbied for by Big Tobacco. This act was actually in their favor. More on why and how that worked for them will be explored later. For now, understand that monopoly cooperation was used in lobbying and both the fighting and passing of legislation.

In 1995, Big Tobacco contributed a then record $4.1 million to congressional campaigns. Monopoly cooperation in putting politicians in their pockets.

Despite all this, their crimes did eventually catch up with them, even if they only got a slap on the wrist for it.

In 1999, the DOJ announced civil litigation against Big Tobacco charging them with violating the RICO Act. In 2004, United States v. Philip Morris et al. wrapped up with $280 billion in fines for the criminal enterprise. And in August of 2006, Judge Kessler issued her decision in the RICO case already mentioned.

“[I]t is critically significant that a federal court has now conclusively found that the industry engaged in a racketeering conspiracy to defraud the American public about the mortal dangers of their product, and that it continues to do so,” writes Brandt.

So you might ask, if the companies were found guilty of being a criminal organization, why are they still around? The answer is monopoly power. In other words, the racket was too big to fail.

To sum up, the idea behind the Sherman Anti-Trust Act was that companies can become too powerful, making it unfair for competition. The RICO Act held that powerful leaders of organizations could insulate themselves from committing any crime themselves, while the organizations they head engage in plenty of criminal activity. Big Tobacco was guilty of both.

Cooperation between a few, the elite insiders, on the important stuff is always going to be more helpful than total competition. This allows you to gain more power and better fight off those that would take it from you.

It goes far beyond competing in a marketplace. When you have the funds to influence science, journalism, law, regulation and therefore, the culture at large, you are playing in a field different from what most people even know exists.

It’s not a level playing field, not even close. You’re playing soccer, kicking the ball along, and they’re playing football, picking up the ball and running with it into the goal. Despite this, their moves are invisible to most. Why? Because they can do things in the shadows and have the money and power to largely keep it that way.

I started with this section because it is ultimately monopoly power that allows those other strategies of the playbook to work. Indeed, it may even be required in some cases. If there were real competition among the big companies, the competitors would expose each other’s ill deeds. But it is better, meaning more profitable, to collude.

Key Takeaways on Monopoly Power

• A monopoly is often thought of as a single company holding all the power, but many times it is a group of companies that cooperate, and thus the term cartel may better function.
• Monopoly power is so potent that it can in fact defy and influence government anti-monopoly action. Despite being found guilty of the Sherman Anti-Trust Act twice, Big Tobacco continued to act as a monopoly.
• Competition can occur on one level, such as advertising for brand loyalty, but cooperation on another level, such as price fixing and a united PR, scientific, legal, and lobbying front.
• The companies that made up Big Tobacco were found guilty of the RICO Act, stating there was a fifty-year conspiracy between them. This means they functionally operated as organized crime, like the mafia, for decades.
• Some monopolies ultimately become too big to fail, meaning they’ve accumulated enough power and connections to prevent themselves from going under no matter the criminal activity they’ve engaged in.
• Compare the power of a monopoly or cartel against the power of the average individual. It is not a level playing field which gives such Industry Playbook strategies even more power.

Please leave any comments or questions below. Feel free to share it with anyone you’d like.

Links to all published chapters of The Industry Playbook can be found here.

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