The author was Professor Amanda Amos of Edinburgh University who seems to be disastrously confused about the merits and/or downsides of advertising and marketing.
ADVERTS for electronic cigarettes could encourage young people to see smoking as a positive thing to do, an expert has warned.So these adverts for e-cigs are pretty rubbish, then.
You see, they're supposed to be encouraging smokers to use e-cigs instead. Therefore are specifically designed to do the complete opposite of making the target audience "see smoking as a positive thing to do". If - as moaning Mandy states - the ads are having the effect of making tobacco smoking more attractive, people seeing the advert would smoke instead of using e-cigs, which would be a massive fail for the ad agency.
Yet she then goes on to advocate plain packaging of tobacco.
On the issue of packaging, Prof Amos said tobacco companies were still able to promote their products by using novelties such as slim, colourful boxes to appeal to younger smokers, meaning a move to plain packets was the next logical step.Err, so now advertising and marketing is incredibly well-targeted and able to hone in on precisely the consumer they wish to attract. Right down to sex and age range to within a year or two either way.
One minute even a fag box is precisely targeted marketing by expert advertising industry professionals designed to suck in teens and women to that exact product.The next, e-cig marketing by the same clever advertising industry professionals is shit and will make people buy something entirely different.
Do you reckon - and I know it's a long shot - that Prof Amos really hasn't the first fucking clue about advertising at all? You know, considering she has spent a lifetime working in public health and not even the briefest of hours in an advertising agency?
The wacky world of tobacco control, eh? I just wish they'd make their very dull minds up.
