Smile! You Can Work for a Tobacco Company!

Submitted by Anne Landman on

The new American Legacy Foundation "truth" Campaign ads use a candid-camera approach to educating the public about the health hazards of smoking. To create the ads, the Campaign ran real online announcements seeking employees for executive-level positions at a tobacco company. The "stage" was a mock job recruiting office in New York City. Actors posed as interviewers while multiple hidden cameras recorded conversations with 40 "applicants" who responded to the ads. Interviewers first tried to impress candidates by describing executive job openings and generous benefits packages in an industry that spends $13 billion a year on marketing in the U.S. alone. They then mentioned that the industry's products kill 1,200 people every day in the U.S., asked interviewees whether they thought changing the name of the company was a reasonable way to avoid bad publicity, and whether they thought they could "plead the Fifth" (pointing out that one tobacco industry executive pled the Fifth Amendment 97 times while giving a deposition in 1997). The cameras captured the candidates' reactions, which were used in the ads. Each ad ends with the question, "Do you have what it takes to be a tobacco executive?" The Campaign had a real job recruiter on hand after the fake interviews to help applicants with real job placement. The ads will run in cinemas in 38 regional markets prior to teen-focused films, and the audience will be able to SMS messages to interact with the ad. The spots will also run on youth-centric channels like MTV, VH1 and Fuse. (The American Legacy Foundation is the funder of CMD's TobaccoWiki project.)

Main Source: 
MediaPost News Marketing Daily, May 28, 2009
Topics: 
Advertising
Tobacco

Comments

Jonik replied on

The Heritage Foundation, ostensibly an opponent of the cigarette industry, shows itself again to be very helpful to its "enemy" by using that industry's top marketing trick, calling itself the "tobacco industry"...as if what they sell is just tobacco, or, in some cases, tobacco at all.

If the Heritage Foundation truly wanted to expose the industry for its recklessness, harmfulness, and fraudulent behavior, it ought to simply describe the products accurately and thoroughly and repeatedly as being industrial concoctions that, once they are processed and adulterated, are no more legitimately called "tobacco" than a handgun might be called “iron ore”.

The Heritage Foundation helps the industry by ignoring the many toxic and cancer-causing pesticide residues that contaminate typical products, without a word of condemnation or specific warning even from public officials…with one largely-ignored exception---Search: "GAO tobacco pesticides", for starters.
Heritage helps again by ignoring that most cigarettes are adulterated with any of about 1400 untested, often toxic, non-tobacco additives. It helps again by ignoring dioxins in the smoke from the still-legal use of chlorine pesticides and chlorine-bleached paper, and it helps even further by ignoring the PO-210 radiation from the still-legal (again) use of certain phosphate tobacco fertilizers.

For the Heritage Foundation to call that "tobacco" is shown most absurd by the fact that any number of low-end cigarettes may not contain a single shred of tobacco but, instead, may be made from all sorts of industrial waste cellulose camouflaged to seem to be tobacco…with measured shots of nicotine extract added, of course.

As the cigarette makers deceive by calling their products "tobacco", Heritage (and the likes of "Tobacco Free Kids", etc.) deceives by blaming tobacco, a natural public domain plant, for rafts of diseases, most which could not possibly be caused by smoke from any plant---most which are already well-known to be effects of exposure to pesticides, dioxins, and that radiation.
The Heritage Foundation seeks to scapegoat nature for the crimes of industry, in this case, it's pretend enemy, makers of typical cigarettes---not to mention the complicit suppliers of all the toxic, cancer causing, fire starting, kid attracting and addiction-enhancing non-tobacco adulterants.

Pam P. replied on

How about doing a hidden camera project about working for a "non" profit tobacco control organization? Then, tell them how "non" profit isn't really "NON" profit. Explain how the American Cancer Society and Tobacco-Free Kids create 501(c)(3)s that cannot legally lobby so they create 501(c)(4)s like the American Cancer Society Action Network and Tobacco-Free Kids Action Fund so they CAN lobby. Look to see what their hidden reactions are. Better yet, ask if they know who the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation is. See if they know that they bought smoking ban laws with "grants", that they're another "non" profit who owns tens of millions of shares of Johnson & Johnson stock and that they profit from NRT products their "non" profit money bought. Ask the candidates if they could sell NRT products. Then find out if they realize NRT has a FAILURE RATE of 98.4% on long term (1 year of longer) (source: British Medical Journal, April 2009) quitting or that Nicorette causes extreme hair loss, skin lesions and high blood pressure or that it's more addictive than the cigarettes ever were (source: askapatient.com). What would their candid reactions be? Or that Winston Cup no longer exists in NASCAR but Nicorette sponsors a NASCAR team. Isn't nicotine, nicotine?

It would indeed be interesting to see how these "applicants" react to Tobacco Control's deception and pure profit. But then again, you will probably remove my post as it directly conflicts with your behavior control agenda.

Mutternich replied on

Then find out if they realize NRT has a FAILURE RATE of 98.4% on long term (1 year of longer) (source: British Medical Journal, April 2009) quitting...

Most people who lose weight have a tough time keeping it off, too. That doesn't mean it's not worth doing.

...or that Nicorette causes extreme hair loss, skin lesions and high blood pressure or that it's more addictive than the cigarettes ever were (source: askapatient.com).

More addictive than cigarettes? If you can't stop smoking without Nicorette or can't stop Nicorette without smoking, how can you say Nicorette is "more addictive than cigarettes ever were"?

Anyway, here's the first comment on Nicorette from askapatient.com:

I have lost more than 60% of my hair and have always had healthy teeth. Suddenly I have 2 teeth that have to be replaced with implants due to acid erosion and fractures. I am totally convinced that the gum has caused all.

There are lots more like that. Now, suppose somebody substituted "Marlboros" for "Nicorette" and "lung cancer, heart disease and emphysema" for hair and tooth loss. Say you worked for Philip Morris. Would you acknowledge that those postings constituted credible evidence?

Or If Nicorette is really that bad, that's just all the more reason not to start smoking in the first place, so you won't have to resort to Nicorette to quit.

...Or that Winston Cup no longer exists in NASCAR but Nicorette sponsors a NASCAR team.

Which probably just means that fewer impressionable kids will be enticed to start smoking and wind up dying early from smoking-related diseases. What a tragedy. Besides, if you're that attached to NASCAR you should be glad anyone at all is willing to sponsor it.

Isn't nicotine, nicotine?

Gosh, what an epiphany! Even though you suck the nicotine into your lungs with a bunch of heated toxic combustion products instead of absorbing it from chewing gum. Who knew?

Anonymous replied on

its a recession, everyone is trying to get by. this mock-job interview is shameless.