AGs' deal leaves many options

by Kathy Prentice

      When tobacco was taken off television 30 years ago, it fled to billboards, and within a decade it accounted for half of all billboard advertising. Now, following the settlement with the nation's attorneys general taking tobacco off billboards, tobacco is finding new roosts.
     And where? Just about everywhere but billboards and TV.
      ''Tobacco companies are not holding back on new campaigns,'' says attorney John Fithian, counsel to the Freedom to Advertise Coalition. ''Magazines, newspapers, direct mail and point of sale are all main advertising areas.''
      So, it seems, is retooling the product's image. Fresh slogans are part of the fresh image: ''American original'' for Lucky Strikes, ''Mighty tasty'' Camels, and ''When I say no additives, I mean no additives'' Winstons. Brands are being packaged in new colors, textures and text. Says Shannon Luce of the North Carolina-based Tobacco Reporter: ''Companies are working to get their messages out any way they can, and packaging is becoming very important.''
      Print appears to be getting a goodly share of the $150 million cigarette makers spent on billboards, and for several reasons. Print ads are still legal if the target audience isn't underage. Print advertising is familiar; tobacco had been moving more into print and out of billboards in recent years. Also, many images that appeared on billboards easily transfer to print ads.
      ''We're seeing a new kind of full-page color cigarette ad in local papers. Very dramatic. Very expensive,'' says Robert Kline, Director of the Tobacco Control Legal Clinic at Northeastern University School of Law in Boston. ''There's also a campaign that mocks the Surgeon General's warning about health: `Warning, this advertisement contains fun.'''
      Not all images have come indoors. Under the terms of the voluntary agreement, which went into effect last month, tobacco is allowed to retain signs up to 14 square feet attached to stores selling their products. With brand competition stiff and point-of-purchase advertising growing, these mini-murals are ideal tobacco display areas.
      ''The main driver of new (advertising) development is tobacco,'' says Melody Willis of GSD&M. ''They're looking for ways to dominate interior signage, say of a bar. Then the posters, the cards, everything within is exclusively that product.''
      The struggle for those interior spaces is already intense. ''Some tobacco leaders are getting in trouble for offering retailers discounts if they don't do promotions for other companies for three-month periods,'' notes Luce, and competitors are going to court over the practice.
      Money is flowing into event sponsorships as well. The settlement restricts tobacco companies to sponsorships already under contract, and after those contract expire they are limited to one brand-name sponsorship. But there is no cap on the amount of money they can spend or the number of events held under the sponsorship banner.
      Direct mail marketing is also picking up tobacco dollars. Brown & Williamson is using in-store and print ads, new improved packaging, and a direct-mail campaign, including custom-published magazines, to attract new customers to its Carlton brand.
      The one remain ``if'' in the business of tobacco advertising is when the states, having won the national settlement, will begin to seek even tougher restrictions within their individual borders. Observers believe it will come but not any time soon; attention among anti-tobacco forces these days appears wrapped up in determining how to spend the money from the settlement.

Total tobacco ad dollars 1998 * ** Total: 550,737,000 Magazines 363,700,000 Sunday supplements 10,630,000 Local newspapers 11,750,000 National newspapers 2,033,000 Outdoor 154,700,000 * the remaining $7 million went to TV ads to defeat a congressional ban on tobacco ads ** not including promotions.