Navid Hafez, School of Public Health, University of California, Berkeley, 312 Warren Hall, Dept. of Health Policy & Management, Berkeley, CA 94720-7360, 510-643-9224, hafez@berkeley.edu, Stanton Glantz, PhD, IHPS, Univ. of California-San Francisco, Box 0936, San Francisco, CA 94143-0936, and Pamela Ling, MD, MPH, Department of Medicine, Division of General Internal Medicine, University of California San Francisco, 400 Parnassus Avenue A405, Box 0320, San Francisco, CA 94143-0320.

Objective: Describe the tobacco industry’s global market research and marketing strategies targeting young adults. Methods: Analysis of previously secret internal tobacco industry documents. Results: Transnational tobacco corporations have pursued similar market research and strategic marketing plans in different regions throughout the world. In every market, the major tobacco companies performed research on young adult smokers with three principle foci: branding/brand image, advertising/communication effectiveness, and lifestyle/psychographic inquiry. Tobacco companies identified core similarities in the lifestyles and needs of young consumers worldwide, such as independence, hedonism, freedom, and comfort. The major tobacco companies called for synchronized global marketing efforts with regional nuances in copy design and sponsorship efforts. For example, Philip Morris created a central production bank and guidelines for brand images, but allowed regional managers to create regionally appropriate individual ads. British American Tobacco’s plans for the Kool Music campaign paired Kool cigarettes with popular music worldwide, but ads for different regions displayed different instruments, genres, or catchphrases. Conclusions: Values and lifestyles are central to global tobacco marketing targeting young adults. Worldwide counter marketing initiatives coupled with coherent global marketing policies such as the FCTC are needed to break associations between young adult values and tobacco brands. As globalization promotes the homogenization of values and lifestyles, successful tobacco control messages from developed countries (such as clean indoor air and industry manipulation) should also resonate with young adults around the world. Tobacco industry efforts linking smoking with economic success should be countered with the reality that smoking is decreasing in developed countries.

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