180674 Marketing unhealthy products: Outdoor advertising in Southern Louisiana and Los Angeles

Wednesday, October 29, 2008: 1:24 PM

Molly M. Scott, MPP , The RAND Corporation, Arlington, VA
     
Background: Historically, the alcohol and tobacco industries have been the biggest users of outdoor advertising. However, while the 1999 Master Settlement Agreement has outlawed tobacco billboards and the Outdoor Advertising Association of America has pledged to voluntarily eliminate ads for alcohol and tobacco near schools, playgrounds, and churches, the marketing of food and restaurants has accelerated.

Methods: We observed outdoor advertisements in a sample of 106 urban census tracts in Pre-Katrina southern Louisiana and 114 in Los Angeles County to analyze how multiple neighborhood characteristics relate to the concentration of outdoor advertisements and the types of products that they promote.

Results: More than 1 in 4 tobacco ads in Louisiana failed to comply with the Master Settlement Agreement. The proportion of tobacco ads was almost 162 times larger in Los Angeles (4.9%) and 748 times larger in Louisiana (34.3%) than the proportion of national outdoor advertising expenditures accounted for by tobacco during roughly the same period (.03%). Ads for food and restaurants in Louisiana followed the same pattern. In addition, ads near schools promoted alcohol and tobacco as frequently as any other type of product, and disproportionate marketing of alcohol, tobacco, and food to low-income and minority communities in Los Angeles persisted.

Conclusions: On the ground, tobacco and food outdoor advertising practices do not mirror macro expenditure trends; community exposure to these product is much greater expected. In practice, existing restrictions on alcohol and tobacco outdoor advertising are insufficient to shield communities from their influence.

Learning Objectives:
1. List the neighborhood characteristics most strongly correlated with outdoor advertising of tobacco and alcohol products and explain how they differ geographically. 2. Articulate to what degree tobacco and alcohol companies comply with current law governing outdoor advertisements as well as their industries’ Code of Principles and the legal challenges involved in getting them to comply. 3. Develop a strategy for effective community organization against outdoor advertising of unhealthy products.

Keywords: Tobacco Policy, Marketing

Presenting author's disclosure statement:

Qualified on the content I am responsible for because: I designed and performed all analyses and wrote the text of the paper.
Any relevant financial relationships? No

I agree to comply with the American Public Health Association Conflict of Interest and Commercial Support Guidelines, and to disclose to the participants any off-label or experimental uses of a commercial product or service discussed in my presentation.

See more of: Mixed Messages: Tobacco-Focused Marketing and Press Coverage
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