Tobacco Shops Online To Expand Tobacco

The most known health organizations expressed their alarm regarding how Internet is being used to promote the cigarettes and smoking. Tobacco companies say that they are not using the online world to promote their brands, but there are many concerns about the networking sites and how they are showing how glamorous smoking is and without risks. These concerns refer especially to young people. British American Tobacco, was forced to conduct a damage limitation exercise, because there was found out that on Facebook several of its employees had fan sites for the Lucky Strike and Dunhill brands, which are a production of BAT. The tobacco company didn’t have knowledge about that.

The smoke free group has also showed that BAT hired an online marketing firm, iKineo, to promote the Lucky Strike cigarettes in South Africa. iKineo wrote on its Web site that it had extended the Lucky Strike cigarette campaign into the digital space and using it to mobilize a powerful underground movement to advocate the brand.

 The research exercise in the tobacco market did not forbid advertising the tobacco, but Robin Hewings, Cancer Research UK’s tobacco control manager, said that the tobacco industry has an old history about searching for loopholes that allow its lethal products to target teens. There is not always clear who started with the pro-smoking sites. In 1997, RJR didn’t use any more Joe Camel cartoon in its Camel cigarette advertising, because there was a period when small kids were recognizing this character better than Mickey Mouse, reported the American Medical Association.
There was made a research by researchers at the University of Otego in New Zealand on 163 You Tube cigarette brand-related videos and they found that 71 percent had “pro-tobacco content.” One “freeze frame” video represents a Marlboro packet being turned into a Transformer robot just like in the blockbuster film. Internet is considered to be a cigarette weapon by most of the anti tobacco groups. Lorillard is another important tobacco company in the world and it had and online competition where young people could vote for their favorite music videos. It was established that the competition was promoting the next slogan “Tobacco is whacko if you are a teen”. This slogan was later attacked by the anti – tobacco groups and campaigns. Last week were raised more concerns about cyberspace tobacco promotion, when there was discovered that the annual Global Tobacco Networking Forum had held a workshop on social media for thousands of delegates in the tobacco industry. In the presentation was said that guidelines and Regulations do not represent impediments and that they are very necessary to innovate in the social media space. John Britton is a member of the UK’s Royal College of Physicians’ Tobacco Advisory Group and he said the Internet has a big role in promoting smoking and it was a big concern.