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APHA Scientific Session and Event Listing

Jesse Gelwicks, MA¹, Susan E. Middlestadt, PhD², and Rachel Gross, PhD, CHES¹. (1) Center for Applied Behavioral and Evaluation Research, Academy for Educational Development, 1825 Connecticut Ave, Washington, DC 20009, 202/884-8000, jgelwick@aed.org, (2) Applied Health Science, Indiana University, 116 HPER, Bloomington, IN 47405-4801

Background: In the late 1980s and early 1990s, the tobacco industry began to react to the consistent expansion of the Hispanic population by closely monitoring the population and trying to increase the market share of brands already popular with Hispanics. In 1994, Benson & Hedges was the fourth most popular brand bought by Hispanic Americans, and the second most popular Philip Morris brand. In 1993/1994 Benson & Hedges launched “Creative Solutions,” a mainstream campaign designed to address smokers' feelings of social condemnation created by anti-smoking campaigns.

Purpose: To illustrate the challenges in adapting and translating mainstream advertising campaigns to Hispanic Americans by analyzing Philip Morris' research testing.

Method: The presentation analyzes 22 Philip Morris documents covering one “cultural evaluation” and three qualitative research studies conducted during the adaptation of the “Creative Solutions” campaign. The documents are the result of searches conducted in the areas of advertising, consumer research, and Hispanics Americans in tobacco industry collections available online (http://tobaccodocuments.org).

Results: Analyses of these studies reveal that many of the cultural assumptions that anchored the campaign in the mainstream population were not true for Hispanic Americans. For example, according to the industry research, anti-smoking campaigns were not highly salient to Hispanic Americans and smoking was not yet stigmatized. In fact, the act of smoking was considered highly social: “Hispanics focus more on external (social) than internal (personal) smoking drives.” In the adaptation of advertising, cultural translation is as much of a challenge as language translation.

Learning Objectives:

• Participants will recognize how the failure to consider cultural differences can adversely affect the success of an advertising or counter-marketing campaign.

Keywords: Tobacco Control, Hispanic

Presenting author's disclosure statement:

Not Answered

Handout (.pdf format, 296.8 kb)