The country’s largest cigarette maker, ITC Ltd, uses similar tactics, such as advertising at kiosks. Philip Morris is not alone in using marketing methods that Indian officials say are illegal. Philip Morris’ goal is that every smoker in India should be able to buy a pack of Marlboro “within walking distance,” according to an internal 2015 company document. Of those, about two-thirds smoke traditional hand-rolled cigarettes. Tobacco use kills more than 900,000 people a year in India, and the World Health Organization estimates that tobacco-related diseases cost the country about $16 billion annually.Ī SHORT WALK: A man smokes near a Marlboro advertisement in New Delhi. “India remains a high potential market with huge upside with cigarette market still in infancy,” says a 2014 internal document.Īccording to government data, India has about 100 million smokers. With cigarette sales declining in many countries, Philip Morris has identified India, population 1.3 billion, as a market with opportunity for significant growth. A study published in the American Journal of Public Health in 2002 found that during the 1990s, “tobacco industry sponsorship of bars and nightclubs increased dramatically, accompanied by cigarette brand paraphernalia, advertisements, and entertainment events in bars and clubs.” In targeting young adults, Philip Morris is deploying a promotional strategy that it and other tobacco companies used in the United States decades ago. Arora, the chief tobacco control officer in Delhi, has spent the past three years pulling down cigarette advertisements at local kiosks. The company’s goal is to make sure that “every adult Indian smoker should be able to buy Marlboro within walking distance,” according to another 2015 strategy document. In recent years, they have helped to more than quadruple Marlboro’s market share in India, where the company is battling to expand its reach in the face of an entrenched local giant. Reuters is publishing a selection of those documents in a searchable repository, The Philip Morris Files. In them, Philip Morris presents these promotions as key marketing activities. Philip Morris’ marketing strategy for India, which relies heavily on kiosk advertising and social events, is laid out in hundreds of pages of internal documents reviewed by Reuters that cover the period from 2009 to 2016. A key goal is “winning the hearts and minds of LA-24,” those between legal age, 18, and 24, according to one slide in a 2015 commercial review presentation.Īs with the point-of-sale ads at kiosks, public health officials say that giving away cigarettes is a violation of India’s Cigarettes and Other Tobacco Products Act and its accompanying rules. In internal documents, Philip Morris International is explicit about targeting the country’s youth. These include tobacco shop displays as well as the free distribution of Marlboro – the world’s best-selling cigarette brand – at nightclubs and bars frequented by young people. In response to questions from Reuters, he said the company’s advertising is “compliant with Indian law” and that Philip Morris has “fully cooperated with the enforcement authorities” on the matter.īut Indian government officials say Philip Morris is using methods that flout the nation’s tobacco-control regulations. American consumers were sure that the name of the cigarettes was related to the state of Massachusetts, the American "cowboys ' forge" for the whole country, although this is just a random consonance of the initial letters of these names.Venkatesh says Philip Morris is doing nothing wrong. Later, in advertising cigarettes in America, a cowboy on a horse was used, and "Marlboro" cigarettes became " men's " with a traditional brown filter. The slogan "cherry tip for your ruby lips", emphasized the brand's current positioning. Immediately after entering the market, Marlboro cigarettes were advertised as women's cigarettes that had a red filter. In 1924, Philip Morris cigarettes appeared in America under the abbreviated name "Marlboro". The English Marlborough College, which opened in 1843, has nothing to do with the cigarette brand. The aristocratic theme was present in the brand names, using the surnames of famous counts and dukes. By 1885, the company was selling tobacco products under four brands: "Blues", "Cambridge", "Derby", "Marlborough". Marlboro is a brand of cigarettes of the Philip Morris company, which was originally an English firm that opened a tobacco store in London, on Bond Street, in 1847.
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