VIP’s E‑Cig Advertising Just Isn’t Sexy for Consumers

A recent change in e‑cigarette adver­tis­ing rules has seen ‘vap­ing’ adver­tised on TV for first time. How­ev­er, per­haps the brands are a bit out of prac­tice.

Pat Hong By Pat Hong from Linkdex. Join the discussion » 0 comments

Smok­ing prod­ucts haven’t been adver­tised in the UK for some time due to leg­isla­tive restric­tions. How­ev­er, a recent lift on adver­tis­ing stan­dards has meant an adver­tise­ment for elec­tron­ic cig­a­rettes (e‑cigarettes), or “vap­ing”, has run on UK TV screens. Brands, how­ev­er, have lit­tle to go on in terms of smok­ing adver­tise­ments, and it seems the prac­tice could do with refine­ments for a mod­ern audi­ence.


Many years ago, when adver­tis­ing cig­a­rettes were still legal and back when “more doc­tors smoked Camels than any oth­er cig­a­rette,” one rule presided above all else: sex sells.

As far back as the 1950s, cig­a­rette brands were push­ing the bound­aries of what was appro­pri­ate in adver­tis­ing with provoca­tive graph­ics of women clad in short skirts in Lucky Strike pro­mo­tions, and this estab­lished a trend that would con­tin­ue for decades.

Just check out this seduc­tive ’70s TV spot from John Play­er Spe­cial:

The fact that the cam­paigns ran with this theme for so long proves that they were once effec­tive. How­ev­er the grad­ual ban of all tobac­co relat­ed adver­tis­ing in sub­se­quent years meant that smok­ing relat­ed adver­tis­ing of any kind soon became rel­e­gat­ed to his­to­ry.

E‑cigs: The Return Of Smoking Advertising

Smok­ing adver­tis­ing has made a mirac­u­lous come­back to UK TV screens. A recent change in adver­tis­ing stan­dards means UK audi­ences have seen some­one inhale what seems to be smoke on a TV adver­tise­ment for the first time in almost 50 years. Not tobac­co, of course, but e‑cigarettes.

Here’s the ad:

How­ev­er, the advert was met with a cloud of con­tro­ver­sy. The woman fea­tured in the ad appeared in a cou­ple of video adver­tise­ments released by VIP ear­li­er this year. These were bom­bard­ed with com­plaints and kicked up a bit of a fuss. After all, there’s no smoke with­out fire.

Before we go on, here’s the orig­i­nal unedit­ed ver­sion of the adver­tise­ment:

Evi­dent­ly VIP fol­lows a tra­di­tion of using a sex­u­al theme in smok­ing adver­tise­ments. Although toned down in their lat­est TV edit, they have cho­sen a line of mes­sag­ing that is con­sid­er­ably more explic­it with sex­u­al innu­en­dos than adver­tis­ing cam­paigns for smok­ing in past decades.

The log­ic (as I’m sure it was out­lined VIPs cre­ative mar­ket­ing brain­storms) was that as a soci­ety UK con­sumers have moved on and become con­sid­er­ably more lib­er­al and desen­si­tized in their views of sex in the media, and any attempt to use the theme in their adver­tis­ing would have to be explic­it or else come across as out­dat­ed and coy.

How­ev­er, this has turned out to be a mis­judge­ment. The UK Adver­tis­ing Stan­dards Agency received 1,156 com­plaints about the adverts, main­ly with some point­ing out that they were sex­ist, degrad­ing, and exploita­tive to women, and even accus­ing the use of the word “vape” as being a delib­er­ate, and inap­pro­pri­ate word­play on the word “rape.”

Some indus­try fig­ure­heads have spoke out against the adverts as actu­al­ly “hurt­ing the e‑cigarette” indus­try. As Jacob Fuller, CEO of Blu, voiced in an inter­view with City AM:

Some of our com­peti­tors have made ads which hurt the indus­try due to their bad taste.”

Savvy, Not Sexy

On paper, it falls with­in a long tra­di­tion of advert­ing smok­ing and the cre­ators of cam­paign may even have seen it as a safe bet. Some­thing, evi­dent­ly, has changed in the way con­sumers expect brands to act and mar­ket to them.

It’s a change that has been fueled by dig­i­tal mar­ket­ing, and means, sim­ply, that sex alone no longer sells. After all, cig­a­rette adver­tis­ing of the mid 20th cen­tu­ry was all about telling con­sumers what they need­ed. Brand-cen­tric, rather than con­sumer-cen­tric mes­sages:

lucky strike advertising momentology

Rather cun­ning­ly, it meant being able to avoid all the not-so-pleas­ant facts about smok­ing (in that that they are some­what per­ilous to health).

Missing The Value Proposition

E‑cigarettes how­ev­er, have an dif­fer­ent val­ue propo­si­tion. While con­tro­ver­sial, there are argu­ments in favor of the devices, espe­cial­ly regard­ing their abil­i­ty to wean smok­ers off tobac­co onto some­thing that, while equal­ly addic­tive, is far less detri­men­tal to one’s well­be­ing.

So if one were to apply the prin­ci­ples of best prac­tice dig­i­tal mar­ket­ing, of momen­tol­ogy and pro­vid­ing some­thing con­sumer-cen­tric and use­ful to con­sumers as a means of inform­ing their pur­chas­es deci­sions at every touch­point in which they seek out inter­ac­tions with your brand, VIPs adverts should have rein­forced con­sumer under­stand­ing about the ben­e­fits of their prod­uct. Not bom­bard view­ers with over­ly explic­it gasps of an overex­cit­ed vap­ing woman.

There is still a great deal of mis­un­der­stand­ing as to the ben­e­fits and dan­gers of e‑cigarettes, and the dan­gers of pas­sive vap­ing for exam­ple — why not address some those issues as an insti­ga­tor for real change in the mind­sets of e‑cigarette man­u­fac­tur­ers’ tar­get audi­ences?

Suc­cess­ful mar­ket­ing today isn’t about brands telling con­sumers that they need to buy their prod­uct, or that they will mirac­u­lous become sex­i­er if they do. It’s about being con­sumer cen­tric, and help­ing con­sumers to find what they need with excep­tion­al cus­tomer expe­ri­ence deliv­ery across a range of need states.

If there are gaps in under­stand­ing and knowl­edge about a prod­uct, then be infor­ma­tive and edu­ca­tion­al. ‘Sexy’ may get you some atten­tion, but so will a lit­tle cre­ativ­i­ty, and cre­ativ­i­ty will offend far less.

To do any less than this, can actu­al­ly dam­age the prospects of a brands, or indeed even an indus­try, and in this case, the health of con­sumers. As Fuller stat­ed, “if you start reg­u­lat­ing [the indus­try] like tobac­co and stop allow­ing e‑cigarettes to be adver­tised, then smok­ers won’t be edu­cat­ed, and the alter­na­tive for them is to con­tin­ue to smoke.”

Understanding Modern Consumers

Today’s con­sumers aren’t as gullible pre­vi­ous gen­er­a­tions. Con­sumers seek authen­tic­i­ty, use­ful­ness, and great pur­chas­ing expe­ri­ences above all else.

A shiny adver­tise­ment pro­duced to manip­u­late emo­tions is no longer enough. And sex, when uti­lized by a brand to ten­u­ous­ly enhance the desir­abil­i­ty of a prod­uct, no longer works with the savvy, media sat­u­rat­ed con­sumers of mod­ern soci­ety.

E‑cigarette man­u­fac­tur­ers may have had the chance to reach, and change the per­cep­tion of new audi­ences with video and TV cam­paigns, but here have clear­ly missed the mark. Sim­ply trust­ing in “sex sells” will increas­ing­ly become a worth­less con­cept.

Just like an annoy­ing pop­up, using sex in smok­ing adver­tise­ments is nev­er real­ly want­ed. It no longer ful­fills a tan­ta­liz­ing, desir­able taboo, but instead forms a dis­taste­ful and some­what inef­fec­tive attempt to entice a change in lifestyle for an audi­ence that has long since moved on.


What are your thoughts on VIP’s adver­tis­ing?

Pat Hong

Written by Pat Hong

Editor at Linkdex/Inked, Linkdex

Pat covers the SEO industry, digital marketing trends, and anything and everything around Linkdex. He also authors Linkdex's data analysis and reports, analysing the state of search in various industries.

Inked is published by Linkdex, the SEO platform of choice for professional marketers.

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