Conquering young adult consumers: A documents and content analysis of tobacco industry produced controlled circulation magazines

Significance: The tobacco industry produced controlled-circulation lifestyle magazines promoting cigarette starter brands such as Marlboro, Camel, and Newport for at least the past decade. These well financed and widely distributed magazines bypass scrutiny by public health professionals because they are distributed to people on the industry's extensive mailing lists. For example, in 1999, the year following the Master Settlement Agreement (MSA), Philip Morris more than doubled their yearly magazine budget to $20.5 million for Unlimited to reach 1.8 million readers in the USA. Objective: Describe the tobacco industry's goals for using lifestyle magazines, their content and design, and potential for encouraging smoking. Methods: Quantitative and qualitative analysis of: 1) Previously secret tobacco industry documents, and 2) the largest publicly available collection of tobacco industry produced direct mail magazines (from www.trinketsandtrash.org). Results: Lifestyle magazines reflect tobacco industry psychographic profiles and provide impetuses for smoking experimentation. These magazines present bold images, witty minutiae, and advertisements for alcohol, tobacco, and cool accoutrements salient to young adults. The magazines were developed as part of relationship marketing efforts, and reinforce the major image characteristics associated with specific starter cigarette brands. More recently, direct mail magazines increasingly direct users to brand specific websites. Conclusions: Tobacco industry produced direct mail magazines are an important means of reinforcing brand imagery and building relationships with beginning smokers. This channel has become important as other channels that feature brand image have become less available after the MSA. We recommend study of their effect on young adult smokers' behaviors.