Damage Control
1954 was a rough year for the tobacco industry. In 1952 Reader’s Digest published an article entitled “Cancer by the Carton” that detailed the emerging scientific evidence suggesting a link between smoking and lung cancer. The stir it created opened the media floodgates, and in the following two years similar stories had run in publications ranging from the New York Times to Good Housekeeping. Cigarette sales went into a sudden decline. An internal memo of the Tobacco Institute, an umbrella trade organization for tobacco growers and producers, referred to it as “the 1954 Emergency.” Clearly those in the industry believed that the spate of research implicating their product as a contributing factor in a host of serious health problems would do untold damage to their bottom line, particularly if that research continued receiving prominent and uncritical coverage in the major news and opinion outlets.
There were really two problems, from the point of view of the tobacco industry: One was the research itself and the second (and far more serious) problem was the media coverage of that research. In order to address both of those problems and nip the growing public backlash against tobacco products in the bud, in December 1953 a group consisting of the heads of the major tobacco companies met with one of the finest minds in the PR industry, John Hill, and discussed with him their interest in sponsoring a pro-cigarette campaign to offset the negative publicity. Two weeks later his PR firm, Hill and Knowlton * , returned with the proposal that an organization be created whose goal would be convincing the public that the dangers of smoking had been exaggerated. It would do this by presenting compelling scientific research showing the case against tobacco to be inconclusive.
The resulting organization was the Tobacco Institute Research Committee, which was funded by Philip Morris and staffed by former employees of Philip Morris, R.J. Reynolds and Brown & Williamson. The TIRC announced its arrival by purchasing ad space in over 400 newspapers across the country, reassuring the public of their deep concern for the health of their customers and of the general public. The ads promised that the TIRC would be working closely with health officials and members of the scientific community to investigate the negative health impacts, if any, associated with smoking. It also promised that, in the unlikely event that evidence of adverse effects was discovered, the next phase of research would focus on producing cigarettes that were safe, so that smokers everywhere could continue enjoying the rich, smooth flavor of their favorite brands for years and years to come.
The TIRC’s director, Dr. Clarence Cook Little, had previously been the director for the American Society for the Control of Cancer (later called the American Cancer Society) and was a widely-respected geneticist. With these impressive credentials in hand he set about finding sympathetic forums for the TIRC’s position that there was no scientific basis for drawing a connection between cigarettes and cancer, and he was given the opportunity to publicly air this position through no less prestigious news outlets than Edward R. Murrow’s “See It Now” program * (a transcript of which can be found here) and the New York Times, wherein Waldemar Kaempffert, “the dean of American Science Writers,” informed his readers that the TIRC was on the case:
Although “many will argue that an impartial investigation can hardly be expected from a body of experts paid by the tobacco industry," Kaempffert wrote, nevertheless he considered the TIRC’s a credible source, in part because "Dr. Little is an eminent geneticist, a type of scientist who has the courage to face facts and to state them."
In spite of his alleged courage at facing the facts and stating them, Dr. Little, eminent geneticist, testified in a 1960 court case that the TIRC had to date conducted no studies on the effects of tobacco smoke, which it did not view to be carcinogenic. Furthermore, they had ruled out the efficacy of animal experimentation to investigate tobacco’s effects. Nor were there any plans to conduct epidemiological studies. Considering this somewhat lackluster record of conducting scientific inquiries into its purported area of expertise, one might reach the conclusion that the TIRC in fact did no research whatsoever and was merely a PR front. But that assumption would be incorrect, for while it certainly does seem that the bulk of their efforts were directed at disseminating a tobacco-friendly message to the American public, they did also fund research into the causes of cancer. They seemed particularly interested in identifying other possible causes of cancer besides smoking, and perhaps due to Dr. Little’s prior experience in genetics research, they funded numerous studies into possible hereditary bases for cancer. As it became clear that any serious examination of lung cancer and heart disease might produce results that would prove unfavorable to their position, subsequent studies avoided any examination of those illnesses. Research into cell biology, developmental biology, immunology, genetics, pharmacology, neuroscience and virology was undertaken in an attempt to isolate some “third factor” that was to blame for lung cancer in smokers. Much was made of the problem of equating correlation with causation, and Tobacco Institute researchers frequently put forth the argument that it was possible that the same genetic traits that caused certain people to smoke “to excess” (while paradoxically denying that there were any health risks whatsoever associated with smoking) might also give them a greater propensity towards developing cancer.
In spite of all these efforts to produce alternative explanations for why smokers developed cancer at rates far above the statistical norm, the industry’s position that there was no causal connection continued losing ground. Shortly after an especially damning 1964 Surgeon General’s report came out detailing the mounting body of evidence connecting smoking to elevated cancer risk, the TIRC changed its name to the Council for Tobacco Research. Subsequent lobbying and public relations activities were taken over by the Tobacco Institute. To further create the appearance of separation between the research and advocacy arms the CTR’s Scientific Advisory Board was created to fund promising independent research. In this way they cultivated a cadre of sympathetic scientists at universities and research foundations that could be counted on to produce results to bolster their arguments, leaving it to the PR experts at the Tobacco Institute to ensure that the results of any such studies were given favorable coverage in the media (while of course taking pains to conceal or omit, whenever possible, any mention of the funding source for these "independent" studies.) Not only was this strategy wildly successful at swaying public opinion and forestalling government regulation of their product, but the PR techniques developed by the Tobacco Institute and CTR went on to become standard practice in a host of damage control campaigns that were to follow. The identifying features should be instantly recognizable to anybody who follows current news reporting on a host of scientific controversies.
Next: Part IV!
Over a year ago I wrote this piece by way of mocking the states that were passing laws permitting pharmacists to refuse service to customers based on the pharmacists' religious beliefs. To point out the absurdity of allowing people to refuse to do their jobs based on their own personal reading of some holy text, I thought I'd use the example of bus drivers and cabbies refusing to transport people whom they suspected of being sinners. Because, hey, anybody can see how ridiculous that would be, right? People have an odd reverence for anybody in a white lab coat, but surely nobody would stand for that sort of behavior from a cabbie, right?
Update: The Gift Of Prophecy, I tells ya.
That Warm, Soft Glow
When I'm watchin' my TV and a man comes on and tell me
How white my shirts can be
But, he can't be a man 'cause he doesn't smoke
The same cigarettes as me
You know when you’re seeing an advertisement. You’ve seen plenty of them by now and you’re no doubt familiar with how they work. You know that the message relates to the product name that can be seen at the bottom of the screen (or hovering right over some cleavage) and that it’s designed to elicit some kind of favorable response from you. You’re probably even aware of the sorts of psychological appeals that are commonly used in advertising, understanding that most products avoid direct appeals to reason (this product is superior to other products, this product is necessary, this product will enhance your life in some tangible way) because those sorts of appeals are likely to be addressed critically by the recipients, whereas direct emotional appeals stand a better chance of influencing that person’s actions by bypassing critical thinking altogether. You, jaded media consumer that you are, recognize advertising when you see it and adjust your perceptions accordingly.
There is a large class of PR that is similar to advertising in its appearance and methods. For instance, it has been said that Coca-Cola™ is the most successfully branded product in the world. It is sold in virtually every possible outlet that exists for carbonated beverages (often to the exclusion of competing products) and the name is a household word which in many places has become synonymous with “soft drink.” * So when you see an ad for Coke™ on television, it is not performing the same function as would an ad for a product which is unknown to you: "Hey! There's a new product in town! All the cool kids are trying it!" Instead, it is serving to reinforce that strong sense of brand identity and maintain positive associations with the brand name: "Remember that day when you played hooky from work and went to the baseball game? Wasn't that a great time? You just sat there watching the game and drinking a Coke™ without a care in the world. And then you saw your boss on the JumboTron™ ! What a day that was..."
Similarly, when you see a message saying “GE: Imagination At Work” * immediately following your favorite PBS show, the intention is not to sell you light bulbs. Presumably you are already aware that GE™ makes light bulbs. Instead, the intention is to foster a positive feeling towards their company that a more descriptive slogan like “GE: Begrudgingly Fulfilling Our Court-Ordered Superfund Clean-up Obligations” would not generate.
Here's a quick question: When you hear the old corporate slogan for GE (“We Bring Good Things To Life”) can you hum the accompanying melody? Do you suppose that you remember it because it’s catchy? Or because you’ve heard it repeated oh, a few thousand times and it is now indelibly burned into your psyche? GE engaged in rather aggressive branding efforts throughout the last two decades, resulting in that eight-note ditty becoming an inescapable fixture of the media environment. These efforts may have been undertaken at least in part to offset negative publicity surrounding GE's involvement in the production of nuclear weapons. After a lengthy boycott and an Oscar™ -winning * documentary entitled “Deadly Deception” inspired a growing backlash by publicly airing damning accounts of flagrantly irresponsible conduct, GE in 1993 sold off its Aerospace division and got out of the nuclear weapons business. It has since expended a great deal of capital shoring up its image as a responsible corporate citizen.
This sort of campaign is known as "Damage Control." When a corporation's image is suffering in the public sphere it is often deemed necessary to engage in this type of PR to offset negative perceptions surrounding its products and activities. In the case of GE this ultimately took the form of placating its harshest critics by divesting its interests in the most controversial aspects of its business while simultaneously stepping up efforts to strengthen the brand name's association with the more humanitarian aspects of its operations, such as its contributions to medical technology.* But what is a corporation to do when no such divestiture is possible? What if the business model is so inextricable from some negative outcome that simply getting out of that business and walking away would represent too great a loss for the company’s shareholders to stomach?
Those sorts of PR campaigns are the most interesting of all. Perhaps the best example, the poster child if you will, is to be found in what is hands-down the most successful damage control campaign of all time: That waged over the last half-century by the tobacco industry.
It’s all good fun to have a laugh at the corny aesthetic of Cold War era. Ever since at least the early American New Wave period of the late seventies and early eighties the gee-whiz, Father-Knows-Best, plastic-is-good-for-you visual style has been used as a shorthand for everything that is square and white-bread about America.
While skillful pop subversives like DEVO and others may have for a time successfully adopted the visual language of fifties-era advertising (or some twisted futuristic mock-fifties) as a means of lampooning the excesses of consumerism and the penchant for mindless conformity characteristic of the Reagan era (partly to counter the Reaganites’ own tendency to re-cast the fifties as a fabled golden age of American wholesomeness and prosperity) the tropes of this style were quickly co-opted and de-fanged by others, thanks largely to the miracle of irony-inversion. (*) As soon as Nick at Nite starting using this device in ads like their “How to be Swell” commercials to promote sit-coms from the fifties, the potential for irony was lost. Ditto for Austin Powers and the Mod Sixties. Once something appears on a limited-edition Taco Bell beverage cup, it’s no longer subversive.
So while the Sugar Swings ad in the previous posting may be hilariously kitschy by today’s standards, let us not get too carried away congratulating ourselves over how much more sophisticated we’ve become, lest we dislocate our arms whilst patting ourselves on the back. For while it is true that subsequent generations have come to view the claims made in advertising with increased skepticism, it is also true that PR messages like “Sugar Swings” are still very much a feature of the modern media landscape. Even though modern PR campaigns are often not visible in the form of full-page ads sponsored by “Sugar Information Inc” running in the most popular magazine in the country, it is worth noting that the organization which sponsored those ads, the Sugar Association, is still very much a going concern. The Sugar Research Foundation changed its name to the World Sugar Research Organization, Ltd. in 1968, but its mission of “educating health professionals, media, government officials and the public about sugar’s goodness” continues today. The fact that you don’t see many ads like that one featuring our Watusi-happy Mary simply means that the sugar producers and growers represented in the Sugar Association have found other, less overt means of getting their message out. You may not have known you were hearing such a message, but you almost certainly have heard it in some form.
Here’s an example: The Truth About Splenda. While purporting to be a public-service type message about the dangers of artificial sweeteners, you can see down in the small print at the bottom of the page that this website and the associated PR campaign is the work of the Sugar Association, and that the image of the innocent child being menaced by some ominous out-of-focus cookies * is more or less in line with the “protect the Children!” message of the 1965 ad. Here’s a quote from the "Fact Versus Fiction" page about the popular artificial sweetener:
Despite all the slick Madison Avenue advertising, the fact remains that Splenda is actually a chemical compound that contains chlorine. The more chlorine atoms, the sweeter the taste. Consumers deserve to know the truth about the food products they are purchasing for themselves and their families.
That last sentence is certainly an admirable sentiment, but as it very specific in its application to a product that happens to be a rival to the product which the Sugar Association was created to promote, it probably shouldn’t be taken as a blanket endorsement of unlimited consumer information about all food products at all times, any more than it should be read as a blanket condemnation of slick Madison Avenue advertising. That is to say, the statements issued by the Sugar Association regarding artificial sweeteners may well serve the public’s interest in this instance, but it is reasonable to infer that there is another agenda aside from pure altruism behind making such information available. That agenda goes to the heart of what modern PR is all about.
Next: Part II!