This is Chapter 24 of my new book, working title “The Industry Playbook: Corporate Cartels, Corruption and Crimes Against Humanity” that is being published online chapter by chapter.
What ultimately led to Big Tobacco losing some power? The legal battles were important. The overwhelming scientific facts eventually became self-evident. The whistleblowers definitely helped. The solid journalism that covered all of the above was critical. And it was all these things that coalesced into shifting culture.
For a moment stop thinking of yourself as an individual, but awash in a sea of humanity. So many of your thoughts, feelings, beliefs, and values come about because of the culture we’re surrounded with. Yes, you can consciously change these things, but most things are formed or at the very least influenced from the culture you live in.
In this chapter I will re-examine many of the events that previously were covered. However, this is done through the lens of how it shifted the overall culture.
Brandt writes, “In 1926, Chesterfield, then the nation’s number one cigarette, ran its famous advertisement in which a woman asks a man smoking nearby to ‘Blow Some My Way.’ From the perspective of the late twentieth century, this ad is a strikingly ironic indication of the radical shift in the nature of smoking and risk.”
Reflect on that for a moment. This successful ad campaign came before there was even a shred of an idea that secondhand smoke was dangerous. It speaks to outdated male and female roles that have similarly changed in our culture.
Recall in 1929 that chief propagandist Edward Bernays launched the “torches of freedom” campaign in order to get women to smoke in public. This campaign allied itself with a cultural movement (women’s liberation) that was already strongly in force. You could say it was co-opted by Bernays and Big Tobacco in order to sell more cigarettes. And remember, this was a successful PR campaign. It was no longer “blow some my way” but women smoke for yourselves.
What steers culture? Advertising does to a degree. Public relations far more so. And the professional relations (doctors, scientists, journalists, politicians, etc.) is the more critical part of that happening. This is true in Big Tobacco steering the culture where they want it, for reasons of profit. But it is equally true of public health advocates, anti-smokers, etc. that wanted to steer the culture the opposite way.
Culture is by and large steered through the media. In 1952, a popular article, “Cancer by the Carton” was republished in Reader’s Digest gaining wide circulation. The next year Time magazine published an article about titled, “Beyond Any Doubt.” These were some of the earlier pieces in major media publications that began the shift in the view of tobacco.
Yet, this was matched a short time later by Big Tobacco’s “A Frank Statement to Cigarette Smokers.” It wasn’t in a single major media publication but instead went out in 448 newspapers across 258 cities. This in turn won more media promotion from journalists congratulating Big Tobacco on doing the right thing in researching the risks of tobacco.
Now we had a cultural war on our hands. The scientific evidence coming to light about the risks of tobacco which would naturally work to lower consumption. And the warring side was Big Tobacco defending against this, seeking to promote cigarettes even more.
Television coverage is a place where culture is steered by and large especially back then due to the limit of media choices. At CBS Edward Murrow covered the tobacco controversy in two consecutive broadcasts at CBS. The head of Hill & Knowlton worked hard to make sure the coverage was a “balanced one” thus bringing the culture war over tobacco to the forefront. This controversy would continue for another decade at least. Some of the culture believed the science about the risks. Others in the culture believed Big Tobacco’s stance that the risks weren’t proven.
In 1961, 488 billion cigarettes were sold. Per capita consumption was 4,025 cigarettes. “From a business standpoint the tobacco industry has weathered this latest spate of health attacks on its products,” celebrated Hill &Knowlton. In other words, they were successfully “managing” the culture.
In 1967, John Banzhaf, a lawyer, asked the FCC to apply the “fairness doctrine” to cigarette advertising. The FCC granted a mandate of one antismoking message for every three TV commercials. These ads proved to lower cigarette consumption. This impact on culture led Big Tobacco to stop advertising on TV completely. While they continued to advertise elsewhere, this was a major big blow to their influence.
Imagine if this had not happened. There’s a good chance, with continued TV advertising they would have had more influence on journalism then they did. (Just look at Big Pharma’s every-other-commercial advertising onslaught in the USA on major news programs today.)
In 1978, Roper Organization, working under the direction of the Tobacco Institute, conducted a survey reporting, “Nearly six out of ten believe the smoking is hazardous to the non-smoker’s health, up sharply over the last four years. More than two-thirds of non-smokers believe it and nearly one-half of all smokers believe it. This we see as the most dangerous development to the viability of the tobacco industry that has yet occurred.” In other words, the cultural tide was turning.
“Many observers in the media and among tobacco interests predicted a war between smokers and nonsmokers, but it never happened,” writes Brandt. “As public restrictions on smoking became more aggressive in the 1980s and early 1990s, compliance remained remarkably high despite little or no official enforcement…The thousands of smoking regulations enacted during this period were only a step ahead of changing social conventions, and they did not cause conflict so much as help legitimate the new norms…What was fragrant became foul; what was attractive became repulsive; a public behavior became virtually private.”
If the culture, meaning the public at large, wasn’t ready for such laws there would have been more pushback on them. But the public was ready. The culture was ahead of the laws being enacted because of science and media.
You can see this even more clearly on flights. In 1988, smoking was banned on flights of two hours or less. Northwest Airlines announced a total ban on smoking which they heavily advertised and were successful with. More and more people, the culture at large, wanted smokeless flights. Culture is going to affect business decisions such as this. This wouldn’t have happened in the 50’s or 60’s. An airline that advertised smokeless flights back then almost assuredly would have flopped. In 1990, smoking was banned on all domestic flights.
A big cultural marker was in April 1994 when the CEO’s of the top seven tobacco companies appeared before Congress and all stated under oath that tobacco was not addictive nor that they manipulated nicotine levels in cigarettes.
By this point and time, most of American culture saw through the deceit of Big Tobacco. In fact, within the following year every one of those CEO’s had been replaced. I guess lying to Congress was not seen as good leadership, or at least good PR.
The cultural tide turning led to even more revelations coming out. The 90’s were largely the decade of the tobacco whistleblower. This led to big media coverage despite all of Big Tobacco’s efforts to keep whistleblowers under wraps. In included the leaked documents from Merrell Williams, the revelations of Jeffrey Wigand and others.
Entertainment, as a subset of media, is a big part of culture. So when Wigand’s story got promoted further through 1999’s The Insider starring Al Pacino and Russell Crowe it further shaped culture. This movie was nominated for seven academy awards. It received lots of attention.
I remember watching this movie when I was a teenager. Without fully grasping the context, and having nowhere near the understanding I currently possess, this movie still imprinted some of these basics on me. If I hadn’t seen this movie then, would I still be writing this book? Maybe or maybe not, it’s impossible to say for sure. Yet that I even can pose that question shows the influence of cultural impacts.
Brandt writes, “As the social and political status of the industry deteriorated, a number of institutions took actions to reduce the influence of the companies. Some universities, pension funds, and state governments divested their holdings in tobacco stocks. And a number of universities developed new policies to ban the acceptance of tobacco research funding—acknowledgement that the industry had historically used such grants to gain status and legitimacy, while distorting scientific progress.”
These are only steps that could happen when enough of the culture is aware of and believes in the goodness of such actions. And yet there is also individual action. Who started up the conversation at the first university to do so? Who took the steps that would lead the culture moving forward in that direction?
Now, you might think that Big Tobacco losing a RICO case in 2006 would be the final nail in the coffin of them having any cultural influence, but alas that is not the case. It is in the industry’s best interest for all these lessons to be forgotten. We saw how they target the youth of today in much the same way as previously. However, without the cultural influence that I and many others grew up in, such lessons are lost on many.
Of course, it’s not just the tobacco industry alone that wants this stuff forgotten. The PR firms, lawyers, politicians and others that benefit from the use of the Industry Playbook strategies don’t want the culture at large to know them.
Education is important to keep these lessons top of mind for every person. That’s why I wrote this, in the hopes that it can steer the culture, even just slightly, in a positive way.
Key Takeaways on Culture Shift
- Culture both influences and is influenced by everything that occurs especially popular media whether that is news coverage or entertainment, as these are the main ways most people interact with scientific, legal, political or other fronts.
- Culture can be steered in ways that are both for good and ill.
- The co-opting of a cultural movement already under way, as we saw with Bernays’ “Torches of Freedom” campaign allying itself to women’s liberation, can be a PR masterstroke. Attaching yourself to a cultural movement in action is easier than starting one from scratch.
- What effectively steers the culture, such as a successful advertising or PR campaign, must be matched to the times. Any other time it could flop. The culture is the environment in which all things take place.
- For laws to take effect it often must mean that the culture is ahead of the legislation being passed and enacted.
- Culture effects business decisions such as making smokeless flights available, institutions divesting of tobacco stocks and more. These can be seen as both cultural movements on a collective level, as well as the individual decisions and actions involved.
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