All these insights help guide the development of anti-smoking initiatives. In essence, marketing ensures that the company's efforts focus on the profitable satisfaction of consumer needs and that the operating environment remains favourably disposed towards this end. Effective tobacco control must, therefore, combat the industry's marketing. The recent EU directive on tobacco advertising is a major step forward in this respect. The resulting insights were put in the public domain and formed the basis of a highly professional and successful lobbying campaign.
Marketing is everything the tobacco industry does to encourage the profitable use of their products.
At its most obvious level, it takes the form of advertising. Indeed, advertising and marketing are sometimes seen as synonymous. This, of course, is likely to vary from one customer to the next. The marketer therefore divides his potential market into segments with similar needs, such as young starters or older established smokers, and targets them with appropriate pricing, distribution and product strategies. The last of these variables has become one of the most notorious in tobacco marketing.