Philip Morris’ Ad Campaign Touts Smokers : Tobacco Maker Aims to Counter ‘Pariah’ Image

NEW YORK — The nation’s biggest tobacco maker launched a multimillion-dollar advertising campaign Tuesday touting the economic contributions of smokers, who one tobacco executive claimed were cast unfairly by anti-smoking forces as social pariahs.

Sponsoring the ad campaign is Philip Morris Magazine, published by Philip Morris USA, maker of Marlboro, Virginia Slims and Merit cigarettes.

The first full-page ad, placed Tuesday in 19 daily newspapers across the country, including the Los Angeles Times, carried the headline “$1 trillion is too much financial power to ignore.”

The figure--representing the household income of smokers--was based on findings from the Roper Organization, a polling firm that said it interviewed a nationally representative sample of 2,000 people about a number of issues, including smoking habits.

Timing Questioned

A critic of past advertising efforts by the tobacco industry, Irving Rimer of the American Cancer Society, said the campaign “left out the other half of the story and that is smoking’s costs to the economy.”

Rimer said smoking costs the economy an estimated $65 billion a year in terms of lost productivity and treatment of smoking-related diseases.

The ad campaign comes amid widening efforts to ban smoking in public places and just two weeks after a Newark, N.J., jury held another cigarette maker, Liggett Group Inc., partly responsible for a smoker’s lung cancer.

In that case, the first such finding in 30 years, the jury also cleared Liggett, Philip Morris Inc. and another tobacco concern, Lorillard Inc., of conspiring to mislead the public about the risks of smoking.

Guy L. Smith, publisher of Philip Morris Magazine, said the timing of the campaign had nothing to do with publicity about the verdict against Liggett.

Smith said the ads are designed to make leaders in a variety of industries aware of how much money smokers spend.

“The economic strength of this group has been overlooked or understated for far too long,” Smith told a news conference.

Auto Industry Targeted

He said ads created for subsequent placement in about 30 trade magazines over the next six months will point out what Roper found about the travel, dining, shopping and entertainment habits of the 55.8 million Americans who smoke and support the $35-billion-a-year tobacco industry.

“More than 24 million of this country’s smokers will travel this summer. Make room, America,” one ad says. “America’s smokers attend enough sporting events each year to fill the Astrodome 3,200 times,” another ad says.

He said one ad, indicating that U.S. smokers own 35 million cars and bought more than 5 million new cars last year, was designed to reach automobile industry leaders.

“Enough cars to stretch bumper to bumper around the world four times is too much horsepower to ignore,” the ad states.

Smith said the auto industry was singled out because some opponents of smoking have reportedly suggested that auto makers remove ash trays from cars.

Smith said anti-smoking forces “have attempted to make them out as social pariahs” although smokers don’t think of themselves that way.