Innovate This!

OPINION:As a direct result of the ban, cigarette companies are now among the most innovative marketers in the world

AS A TEENAGER I wanted desperately to smoke, but it just didn't work out for me. For hours I'd stare at an old photo of Hunter S Thompson sitting at a typewriter while writing Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail '72, a fag hanging from his lips while he hammered away, a bottle of bourbon at the desk next to him.

Given a shot at that sort of cool, no policy maker would have a chance at preventing me from a 40-a-day habit. But there was something wrong with the way I held a cigarette that made it look like I was doing it for the first time, every time. In my hands, smoking was the antithesis of hip, to the extent that strangers would smirk at me in pubs, and old, trusted friends would shift away from me. This simple yet deeply debilitating problem did for my smoking career in a way no ban on advertising, or nasty pictures on the packet, would have.

This came to mind when reading the British Medical Association's proposals for a ban on alcohol advertising, which they published this month, called Under the Influence. It blamed the rise of drinking in the UK on advertising, heavy price discounting and 24-hour licensing laws, saying: "Given the industry spends £800 million a year in promoting alcohol in the UK, it is no surprise that we see it everywhere."

The comparison with the rise of anti-smoking legislation is an obvious one, and to get a different view, I spoke to a number of people who'd been there and done that in terms of fighting tobacco's cause. What did they learn from the experience?

To this end, I recently spoke to a former cigarette company marketing man who spent two decades working the corridors of power as a lobbyist, trying to fight off the anti-smoking police. His view was the BMA's alcohol report was a watershed moment and the most useful thing the drinks industry can do is to accept a ban is now inevitable. "It is very much in play and is not a case of if, but when and how. The strategy adopted by the industry has to alter to deal with that new reality," he said.

When Big Tobacco reached this tipping point there were a series of unintended consequences. Because they were banned from using brand logos and conventional channels, the sector was inadvertently liberated from traditional marketing dogma.

So, as a direct result of the ban, cigarette companies are now among the most innovative and sophisticated marketers in the world, years ahead of the pack in terms of disciplines such as neuro marketing and subliminal advertising.

Companies such as Dunhill, Camel and Marlboro exist in Europe not as cigarette companies but by selling clothing and leather goods. The brand lives on, without any reference to smoking or cigarettes. Likewise, the sight of the red Ferrari Formula One car is, in the view of neuro-marketing experts, enough to make people crave a cigarette. For this reason, Marlboro remains one of the sports biggest sponsors, despite the logo not appearing on the car.

By deconstructing the brand logo, using colour and other design triggers, Benson and Hedges and Silk Cut are still able to communicate with their brethren and bypass the legislators. "When there are logos around, my rational mind tells me I shouldn't crave those things," Martin Lindstrom, author of Buyology told me recently. "Without the logo my intuition kicks in and I want to smoke. The evidence is mounting that the most powerful form of advertising today is where you do not have a logo but you make up for this with 'smashable' components of the brand."

Lindstrom and others are beginning to believe the logo, the centre of mainstream marketing philosophy for the last century, is a flawed concept in today's mass-media environment where we come into contact with thousands of logos a day. Rather than persuading us to buy, it is merely alerting us to the fact we are being sold to, and putting up our defences. Could it be that the worst thing the public health policy makers have done is force tobacco, and soon alcohol, then gambling and fast-food, to think harder about how they sell, thus driving innovation.

What's more, my man from the cigarette lobby peed on my parade when he told me my treasured Hunter S Thompson photo was almost certainly a piece of product placement, paid for by Dunhill, the brand he smoked. Ironically, the week the alcohol ban was proposed, the British government backtracked on product placement, legalising a marketing tactic pioneered by the beer and cigarette companies more than 40 years ago. That's a neat trick. They nearly got me with that one.