Learning Objectives: Describe what types of television advertising Philip Morris uses; and the overall amount of exposure it recieves across the US
Abstract: Philip Morris launched their Youth Smoking Prevention television campaign in December of 1998. This was later followed by a corporate public relations campaign in October of 1999, which highlighted their corporate philanthropy. Both campaigns emphasized to the public that Philip Morris was a good corporate citizen and that youth smoking was an utmost concern. Although the company’s monetary expenditures on the media campaigns were widely publicized, little is known about the exposure to this advertising across the US television audience.
Commercial ratings data on the Philip Morris campaigns were acquired from Nielsen Media Research. The data were collected in the top 75 media markets representing most major metropolitan areas for the years 1998 through 2001. Since Nielsen also monitors the gross amount of exposure to commercials, exposure amounts can be estimated for television households in each of the 75 markets to Philip Morris’s media campaigns.
The Nielsen data suggest that Philip Morris launched major advertising campaigns with large exposures to television audiences across the US. In some markets, the exposure to the company’s Youth Smoking Prevention campaign has surpassed the exposure to anti-smoking advertising funded by state health departments. This finding should be of great concern to those states with anti-smoking advertising on television, especially in the light of recent studies with teenagers who consistently rate the tobacco industry ads lowest in causing them to stop and think. Large exposures to poor anti-smoking advertising may eclipse the effectiveness of state anti-smoking campaigns.
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