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The law on cigarettes advertising is quite strict and cigarettes cannot be advertised in most places. However tobacco companies do a lot of what is called indirect advertising and sponsorship. This means they pay to have their product name on other products or they finance sport and art events and even research. So you could test how much you and your friends know about cigarette brands and find out where cigarette smoking or adverts are more likely to be seen. For instance some of the questions could be:

• Which brands of cigarettes do you know?
• How do you know about these brands? (apart from having direct experience because of parents, family members or neighbours who are smokers)
  

Did you see adverts/smoking:

• In Film/video/DVD?
• Television soaps?
• In Sport events?
• On other products? Such as cars, cloth or shoes brands for instance
• On shops' fronts
• In Art exhibitions?
• Any other place?

Collect examples of the adverts you find and take note of situations where smoking is portrayed - for instance in movies and videos - and then analyse what is being said and what are the techniques used to make cigarettes appealing. For example:

• What can be seen in the adverts?
• What do the adverts say about cigarettes?
• Who are the people seen smoking? For instance: young/old, boys/girls, cool/unfashionable etc.
• What kind of people is the advert trying to attract? For instance age group, male/female and so on.

Now that you have looked at a number of adverts and situations where people are shown smoking you can discuss:

• The influence the advert has
• The key selling points of the advert
• The facts that are hidden
• Whether the advertising restrictions are successful

Resources

Here are a selection of websites that may help with your project. Please remember that DrugScope/D-World cannot be held responsible for the content of other sites.

Tobacco Control Supersite - Advertising Gallery A very large gallery of tobacco advertising images by the tobacco industry. This site also contains a collection of anti-smoking posters.

In the Media Research shows that the top cigarette brands smoked by children are also the ones most heavily advertised. From the NHS Give up smoking site.

Tobacco ad. gallery This site provides a searchable gallery of cigarette advertisements that have appaered in magazines.

Special Report: This US report states that tobacco companies have increased shop advertising and promotions since a ban on tobacco billboard advertising in 1999.

An Ad erage Day in the Life of a Kid - American site that describes the tobacco ads one boy sees in a day.

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