Level: Grades 4 to 6
Overview
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In this lesson, students learn how the tobacco industry exploits the needs, wishes and desires of various target audiences in order to foster brand loyalty. Students explore how the tobacco industry creates a false image of the effects of smoking in order to make smoking appear to be a desirable activity. Assuming the roles of marketing personnel in a tobacco company, students suggest ways to exploit teenage girls, teenage boys, and adults.
Learning Outcomes
Students will demonstrate:
- an understanding of how the tobacco industry uses personality profiles about target audiences in order to market cigarettes
- an awareness of how the tobacco industry downplays the health risks associated with smoking
- an awareness of how advertisers use specific strategies to target youth
- an understanding of why the tobacco industry needs to recruit replacement smokers
Preparation and Materials
- Review the teaching backgrounder: Recruiting the Replacement Smoker
- For ideas on how to conduct discussion groups on this topic, see Guidelines for Peer-Led Discussion Groups (on the sidebar)
Make photocopies of the following student handouts:
Make photocopies or overheads of the following ads, or use these as examples for finding similar ads in magazines:
Procedure
Tell your students to imagine that they work for a large multinational tobacco company and they have been called to a meeting. They all work in the marketing branch of the company. Their job is to figure out how the company can sell more cigarettes, so that it can increase its profits.
Explain that you are the marketing vice-president, and you will begin the meeting by giving a "pep talk." Like most executives leading a meeting, you have visual aids to help you get your point across.
Assume the role of ad executive. Use the overhead projector.
Suggested Script:
The good news is that even though we're getting bad press about all the health problems caused by smoking, people keep lighting up! Every time someone lights up one of our cigarettes, that's about one cent profit for us. It may not sound like much, but for each pack-a-day smoker, that adds up to about $70 a year. In Canada, there's about 6 million smokers, representing about 420 million dollars profit each year. So every smoker that chooses our brand is precious to us. We need them, and because they are addicted, they need us.
Show Number of Deaths in Canada Caused by Smoking.
Now, the bad news is that our customers are dying off like flies. That's the problem when one's product causes heart disease, stroke, lung cancer, and emphysema - to name a few of the unfortunate side effects.
Show Why We Need Replacement Smokers.
The other news is that when people start realizing that they're killing themselves when they smoke, they get it into their heads that they should quit. We call these smokers "pre-quitters." At any one time, about 16 per cent of smokers are trying to quit. Only about 10 - 12 per cent of quitting attempts are successful, but still, about 140,000 Canadians do manage to quit each year. This is terrible! What can we do? (Ask for suggestions.) What we need are replacement smokers - new smokers, or "starters," to replace the ones who die or quit. Of course, we also want to convince our present customers that they shouldn't worry about their health. And we want to capture the "switchers" - smokers who are ready to switch brands.
But our best replacement smokers are young people. Why? (Answers may include: they'll be around the longest, and give us the most money; they don't care about long-term health risks; they just want to have a good time; many already think smoking is a "cool" thing to do because their teachers and parents don't like it.)
Distribute Customer Profiles to students.
The company's market research team has been busy studying three groups of customers: teenage girls, teenage boys, and older smokers. They have told us what these groups need in order to feel that it's okay to smoke. It appears that young people want to feel more mature and independent. This being the case, what kinds of images can we show them? Here's a few that worked well for our competitors:
- Show the Advertisements for Young Smokers - or similar magazine ads aimed at young people. Discuss what elements make these ads effective for reaching the desired target audience.
And for people who are worried about their coughing and scorched throats, and about becoming weaker and out of breath, what can we show them? Images of strength, fitness, and fresh air, of course!
- Show Lifestyle Tobacco Ads or similar ads from magazines, stressing physical strength, fitness, sports, and the outdoors. Discuss the messages in these advertisements.
Now your job is to think up new ideas for getting our message across. Think of images that will really "grab" the readers. Who should be in your ads, and what should they be doing? Describe the people in detail, so we can go out and find the right models.
Activity
- Divide the class into three groups. Give each group leader a "customer profile." The students brainstorm messages (verbal and visual) that will influence their target group. They also decide which magazines to place their ads in.
Each group leader reports on the group's strategy, which is critiqued by the class as a whole.
Evaluation
