Brand Failures

PR failures 143
regarding youth marketing and the Joe Camel campaign were made public.
When the settlement was resolved, RJR stated that the ‘Mangini action [. . .]
was an early significant and unique driver of the overall legal and social
controversy regarding underage smoking that led to the decision to phase out
the Joe Camel campaign.’
However, as the RJR documents are still available on the Web, the negative
PR damage has been a little more difficult to erase. As Stanton Glantz of
UCSF University, which manages the online resource where the documents
are kept, points out, ‘the RJR information is very easy for the public to
address. In contrast to recent releases of documents by the tobacco industry
and the House Commerce Committee on the web, the Mangini documents
are in a form that facilitates downloading them and understanding what they
mean.’
In other words, this time the unpleasant taste wasn’t left by the cigarette
itself.
Lesson from Joe Camel
Youth marketing is a sensitive area. Obviously any cigarette or alcohol
manufacturer caught trying to push its product to children is in breach of
the law. However, all companies need to tread carefully when it comes to
youth marketing. For instance, in the UK brands such as Walkers and
Tesco’s have come under fire for trying to push their brand names through
school-based campaigns. Also, it is important to remember that just
because children have an interest in something, it doesn’t mean that this
is the way to reach them. For example, just because many children are
interested in the occult (over 50 per cent according to one MORI poll),
it clearly doesn’t mean that marketers should fuel this interest.