PMI-funded Quit Cigarettes initiative stubbed out
Monday, February 17, 2020 at 10:29 The ‘Quit Cigarettes’ initiative funded by Philip Morris International and run by Change Incorporated, a media company owned by Vice Media, has come to an end.
I don’t know whether Vice or PMI pulled the plug or whether the campaign was only intended to last a year, but the final articles were posted online last month.
Launched in April 2019, the fiercely anti-smoking project drew criticism (mainly from me!) for the puerile nature of some of its content.
As I wrote here (My brush with Vice and its help to quit project, Change Incorporated), the initiative seemed determined to belittle smokers and their habit.
Headlines included:
How Smoking Increases Chances of Genital Warts
This Is How Smoking Makes Your Penis Shrink
How Smoking is Ruining Your Sex Life
Is Smoking a Deal-Breaker on Tinder?
Other posts included:
Are Festivals Doing Enough to Phase Out Smoking?
How Cigarettes Blight British Seaside Towns
Why It’s Time to Ban Smoking in Airports For Good
Are You Being Bullied Into Smoking Cigarettes?
It was so tedious I eventually stopped visiting the site because I couldn’t imagine that anyone would take it seriously.
I often wondered if the target audience (which, to be fair, didn’t include me) felt the same.
Why, as a smoker, would you continue to visit a site that repeatedly seeks to denigrate you and your habit? I know some smokers are prone to self-flagellation, but come on!
The project seemed ham-fisted and confused from the start. Readers may recall that I was approached and interviewed by a freelance journalist who said he had been commissioned to write a couple of articles about smoking for Vice.
One, he said, would be about the ‘smoking lobby’.
Sadly it never appeared which, on reflection, probably isn’t a surprise. Comments advocating the freedom to smoke were hardly going to be compatible with a campaign called Quit Cigarettes even if the tone of the piece (which I haven’t seen) was anti-smoking in a ‘how bonkers are they?’ kind of way.
Despite this I was contacted not once, not twice, but three times by young ‘casting producers’ working on videos for the project. They left me thinking the project was somewhat chaotic.
The first said she was ‘working on a series of short films for Change Incorporated ... which follows the journey of comedians who want to quit smoking’.
As I wrote here, she wondered if someone from Forest ‘might be interested in chatting with one of our comedians (on film) about your views around smoking?’
She told me she was working on a short-term contract (two weeks, I think she said) and because it ended in a couple of days I would be contacted by someone else if they decided to follow up her initial enquiry.
The following week I did receive a follow-up call but after I explained Forest’s position on smoking I heard nothing more.
A few months later we were contacted by a third casting producer working on another video for Change Incorporated:
We are casting for 3 x expert panelists to take part in a filmed, ‘pub-style’ debate, discussing government plans to make Britain Smoke Free by 2030. This will be a filmed 2-3 hour debate, with questions and discussion, hosted by TV presenter Cherry Healey.
The debate is taking place in London on Wed 2nd Oct, to coincide with Stoptober. It will be an evening event with invitees of up to 30-50 people.
We are looking for a panel of industry experts who can talk about the government paper with gravitas, eg smoking cessation and healthcare experts.
Main debate/discussion themes:
1. How do we make Britain Smoke Free by 2030
2. How could a no-deal Brexit harm this objective?
Each panelist will be paid a fee of £500-750 for their contribution.
The final film will be approx. 3-5 minutes and the content will sit on the Change Incorporated website. Change Incorporated aims to create measurable social change on some of society’s biggest issues that are important to Vice’s audience and the first mission is to get the UK to Quit Cigarettes.
I was in Manchester on October 2, attending the Conservative party conference, so I couldn’t have done it even if I had wanted to.
But I don’t believe for a moment they would have had someone from Forest on their panel of ‘experts’.
In fact, it was clear to me that none of these ‘casting producers’ had a clue what Forest is or what we represent.
Meanwhile, what began as an online campaign then launched a series of ads on the London Underground.
Posing the question ‘Why do you smoke?’, one advertisement carried the slogan ‘Your Reasons Aren’t Good Enough’. Alerted by an observant commuter, I wrote about it here.
PMI - which insisted it had no editorial control over the Change Incorporated initiative - is reported to have paid Vice £5 million to produce ‘sponsored content’ for the project. I would love to see an internal memo justifying the expense and explaining what, if anything, it achieved.
How lovely to have that amount of money to spend on a single campaign. Then again, £5 million is loose change to a company committed to giving the Foundation for a Smoke-Free World one billion dollars over twelve years.
Having reached the end of the road with its Quit Cigarettes initiative, the Change Incorporated website is now running a series of articles about climate change and the environment.
Meanwhile I look forward to PMI’s next quit smoking initiative. What will those clever people in Lausanne think of next?
Below: 40-a-day comedian Phil Ellis fronts an anti-smoking film for Change Incorporated, funded by Philip Morris International ('My lungs look like the meat from a late-night kebab shop', Chortle):
“I’d say like my relationship with cigarettes is akin to, maybe like a loveless marriage. You can share the same bed but you barely touch each other and when you do you feel physically sick.”
Reader Comments (3)
“I often wondered if the target audience (which, to be fair, didn’t include me) felt the same.”
I doubt very much whether any current smokers visited it at all. Smokers who don't want to quit simply aren't interested any more, and smokers wanting to quit already know their reasons for doing so and all the various ways they can try to do it, so why would they need to read in detail about any add-on reasons which in truth - compared to the dire threats of instant death and destruction bandied about endlessly over the last five decades - are pretty small beer by comparison? Do CI really think that someone who isn’t bothered by the (implied) inevitability of serious illness is remotely likely to be “converted” by the (also implied) possibility of being less appealing on some tacky “encounter” website. Really? Wow! The lack of understanding of their target audience is truly breathtaking (no pun intended!)
I suspect that the vast majority of visitors to the site were non-smokers either seeking a moment’s smugness and/or reassurance (again only implied, but being non-analytically-minded non-smokers they won’t notice subtleties of the “mights” or the “coulds”), along the lines of: “No genital warts for me then! Phew!” Along, of course, with some anti-smokers looking for yet more ways to coerce those around them into giving up (“Oh look, Fred – it turns out that our sex life is only so dire because you won’t give up smoking. It’s nothing to do with me being unattractive, smelly and unresponsive, after all!”)
Another targeted bullying initiative down the tubes-good riddance. It's time the antismoking 'lobby' is exposed for its persecution of smokers.
The campaign was made by anti smokers for anti smokers which is why it was a failure in allegedly trying to target smokers.
Who on earth would be brought over to a quit point of view when only abuse is used to try and persuade people to quit.
What is really enraging, is that without smokers these bullies would not have the money to spend attacking us.
Fcuk PMI - a revolting corporate bully that thinks it owns the people who buy it's product. Some of us are not quite as stupid as the company thinks hence we avoid it's shit and buy from firms that look to support us not abuse us for anti smoker entertainment.