Spare us the angst about 'smoking' coming back to TV ad land
Tuesday, February 18, 2014 at 15:48 This morning I had to be at the BBC studios in Cambridge at 7.20.
It's 20 miles from where I live and I was almost late because I set my alarm for 5.30 and woke up over an hour later.
Good Morning Scotland (BBC Radio Scotland) had invited me to discuss the new TV advertisement for Vype, an electronic cigarette manufactured by Nicoventures which is owned by British American Tobacco.
Some journalists have been getting a little over-excited. According to the Telegraph (a paper I have increasingly little respect for), 'Smoking is back on TV for first time in 20 years'.
Er, no it's not.
I've seen the ad and it is totally innocuous – two young adults running along a street before leaping up and being hit by a small explosion of vapour. (I can't describe it any better. You try.)
No-one is smoking. No-one is even vaping. You don't see any product until the very end when you see the packaging. At no point in the 30-second ad do you see anything that resembles a cigarette – not even an electronic cigarette.
Online the ad finishes with the slogan "Satisfaction for smokers". But that's the only reference to smoking and I understand the TV version says "Satisfaction for vapers" which will mean nothing to large parts of the population.
As it happens I've only seen the ad online. (Someone sent me the link via Twitter.) I was told it would be on television last night, after the 9.00pm watershed, and I spent a frustrating 90 minutes flicking to and fro between ITV, Channel 4 and Channel 5 in order to catch the ad breaks, and I didn't see it anywhere.
But back to this morning's discussion on Radio Scotland. My opponent was Alex McKinnon, director of the Royal Pharmaceutical Society in Scotland.
I read on Twitter we were to debate the ethical issues but I kept my argument rather more prosaic. I expressed amazement that public health campaigners weren't embracing e-cigs, and ads like this, with open arms.
I said many people use them as a smoking cessation aid. They are not used by children (to the best of my knowledge), and there is nothing to suggest they are a gateway to tobacco use.
McKinnon talked about the safety of e-cigs so I said we should welcome Big Tobacco's involvement because, with their resources being put into research and development, the quality of the product was sure to be high.
I added that if Big Pharma was advertising e-cigarettes, just as they advertise nicotine inhalers and patches, no-one would have a problem.
The product wasn't the only thing McKinnon didn't like. The ad, he seemed to be saying, risked making vaping "cool".
I wanted to point out that if vaping was to become "cool" at the expense of smoking that would be a net gain for tobacco control, but it won't become cool if the marketing of e-cigs is over-regulated and heavily restricted.
Unfortunately we ran out of time, for which the producer apologised. No problem, it happens.
I suspect this is going to end up at the door of the Advertising Standards Authority because it only takes one complaint for the ASA to get involved.
Expect them to spring into action, especially if the complaint comes from an anti-smoking organisation.
In contrast, when we complain (about contentious government funded anti-smoking ads, for example) the ASA moves so slowly it's like watching a blind 90-year-old pensioner with rheumatoid arthritis on a drip.
But that's another story.
Update: ASH Wales has just tweeted:
A puppy has died after chewing on an e-cig nicotine capsule. Nicotine is really dangerous for pets! http://t.co/xUaKqkYlnh
Reader Comments (3)
I read in the news online this morning that the word "smoker" is banned from BAT's TV advert. Perhaps just the very mention of us is considered fourth hand smoke of which, of course, there is no safe level. So far, from what you describe, it sounds like the sort of ad I wish other ecig companies would use instead of selling the product on the back of smoker stigmatisation and marginalisation.
I completely agree with the rest of what you say.
The complainers are desperate to feel important. In this case it has nothing to do with them. It was not a cigarette that was being advertised, so why don't they just but-out.
It will be interesting, and perhaps entertaining, to watch how they wriggle, backtrack, splutter with red-faced confusion when the first 'medicinally approved' electronic cigarette is launched. This can only be a few months away now, and will almost certainly be advertised on TV. Will the same arguments apply ? if so, how ?
It will be even more confusing for them, as the first medically approved e-cig will almost certainly be the one being developed by BAT, meaning that they will not only have to agree to the adverts, but also be in a situation where they are supposed to actually support a BAT product. I am looking forward to it.
Just a thought - NRT/anti-smoking adverts already mention 'Smoke or smoking' so this isn't the 'first time in 20 years'.
Are there certain words or actions that only the righteous are allowed to use in society?