The Message of Packaging

Should cigarette packets be more boring? Three predictably contrasting views in today's news [Source: BBC News 21 November 2010].

• UK Health Secretary Andrew Lansley said "glitzy designs on packets" attracted children to smoking and it made sense to look at "less attractive packaging".

• Martin Dockrell, director of policy and research at Action on Smoking and Health (Ash), suggested that cigarette packets are designed to fulfil certain purposes. "They use it to seduce our kids and mislead smokers into the false belief that a cigarette in a blue pack is somehow less deadly than a cigarette in a red one." Mr Dockrell claims that the tobacco industry calls packaging "the silent salesman".

• Simon Clark, director of Forest, a lobbying group that opposes smoking bans, said: "There is no evidence that plain packaging will have any influence whatsoever on smoking rates." Mr Clark described the Health Secretary's move as a "cheap publicity stunt". 

I'm wondering whether there is some kind of moral equivalence implied here between "glitzy packaging" and "cheap publicity stunts".

I'm also wondering about the nature of evidence. The tobacco industry is clearly willing to spend considerable amounts of money on certain things, including attractive packaging, and maybe this willingness constitutes indirect evidence that these things are indeed effective in producing outcomes beneficial to the tobacco industry. This is akin to a kind of existential POSIWID - "here's some mechanism, we can't demonstrate exactly what it does or how it works, but it would be unlikely to exist if it didn't do something useful for the entity that is responsible for its existence".

People attempt to use similar arguments in the biological sciences, to explain certain biological or psychological characteristics, as if these existed solely because of some supposed evolutionary advantage, but this class of argument is methodologically flawed because it grossly over-simplifies the way evolution works.

However, existential arguments may be a little more plausible where human agency is involved. If people and organizations are willing to invest in some costly or controversial mechanism, we may at least infer the existence of a belief that this mechanism will do something useful, even if this belief turns out to be unfounded. (After all, mediaeval Christians were willing to invest in all sorts of ways of getting into Heaven, which most modern Christians no longer credit. And George Bush jr was willing to sanction various mechanisms for obtaining information about terrorist threats, even though many experts regard information obtained by such mechanisms as highly unreliable.)


But existential arguments alone can't tell us what the purpose actually is. The tobacco industry presumably has the objective of selling more cigarettes, but it may also have the objective of reducing regulation by influencing public opinion. Sponsoring sports and culture may once have contributed significantly to the second objective, and perhaps respectable and responsible packaging will help here as well.

Perhaps the Health Secretary genuinely believes (or has been advised) that changing the packaging would reduce the lure of smoking to young people. Or perhaps he merely feels the need to make some kind of anti-smoking gesture, even if he doesn't really think it will make much difference. Because his action is consistent with both sincere belief and political cynicism, we cannot infer either belief or cynicism from his action alone.

Similarly, the fact that Forest objects to the Health Secretary's move might indicate a belief (fear) that it might work, or merely a cynical seizing of a publicity opportunity. Actually, if I were a spokesman for Forest, I should probably want to argue that the Health Secretary's move was irrelevant, because smokers were all sensible grown-ups who weren't influenced by glitzy packaging in the first place. I should also take the opportunity to mildly reprove the tobacco industry for wasting its money on vulgar advertising, just to emphasize in the public mind that I wasn't merely a paid spokesman for the tobacco industry. Forest's defence of glitzy packaging looks suspiciously like protecting the interests of the tobacco industry rather than the official purpose of Forest, speaking up for the freedoms of smokers.

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Meanwhile, the people who design cigarette packaging clearly understand that the meaning is not as simple as the politicians and lobbyists (on both sides) pretend to believe. See for example Catherine R Langan, Intertextuality in Advertisements for Silk Cut Cigarettes April 1998.

Easy Pickings?

Bruce Schneier picks up a story about the police putting warning stickers on vehicles with tempting parcels for the casual thief. [Conyers Police Department warns shoppers to protect valuables in cars, Rockdale Citizen, Friday, December 07, 2007] Bruce thinks the police are just helping the thieves.

In London, the Metropolitan Police put up notices, apparently addressing car thieves, advertising "Free Satnav in this area". Presumably the intended effect is to remind car owners not to leave their satnav in the car.

In contrast, in the city of Leicester, the police have resorted to handing out free cloths, to wipe the satnav marks from the windscreen. [Source: Leicester Police website] This appears to have exactly the same intended effect - to remind car owners about the vulnerability.

Obviously there is a risk that these warnings may sometimes trigger crime rather than help prevent it. But the principle of publishing vulnerabilities is based on the assumption that this information helps law-abiding people to defend themselves from attack more than it helps the attackers. (There are lots of comments in Bruce's blog discussing whether the same principles apply here as to software vulnerabilities.)

Even if these measures resulted in a short-term increase in the levels of crime, they might seem justified if the longer-term effect was to teach car-owners better security habits.

Paradise Wildlife Park

My local paper has a wraparound cover this week advertising the Paradise Wildlife Park in Hertfordshire, under the politically incorrect headline "Paradise - it's all white".

Perhaps the consciously intended meaning of this headline was the fact that the zoo features a number of white animals, including white lions and white tigers.

The advertisement contains several pictures of children enjoying the facilities at the zoo. All of the children in these pictures are white. Is this a coincidence? Does it matter?

We are increasingly accustomed to "political correctness" - and this sometimes seems to entail compliance with some inauthentic and unconvincing vision of modern Britain, achieved by including token representatives of minority groups. Any gross failure to conform to this stereotype - for whatever reason - seems to stand out as an act of deliberate or inadvertent defiance.

My local paper serves a large borough of West London, containing people with a wide diversity of ethnic backgrounds. What message are the non-white families going to get from this advertisement? That they are not welcome at this Zoo?

Perhaps those responsible for this advertisement - including those at the local paper who accepted and printed it - will deny any conscious racism. But that's not the point. Racism is not only manifested as overt bigotry - it may also be manifested through unconscious choices. That's an excellent example of POSIWID - what matters here is the effect.

After all, racism is rarely acknowledged in ourselves. Racism is always other people, isn't it?

Advertising

Seth Godin reports a story from Howard Yermish:

'This evening, my 4-year old daughter came downstairs for some ice cream. When the commercial for the Little Mermaid DVD came on, she said, "We don't need to see that commercial. Don't they know we already bought that movie?"

And she was right.'

A simple view of the purpose of advertising is that it is designed to persuade you to buy a particular product. If you have already bought the movie, then there is no further effect possible, and therefore no purpose in showing you the commercial.

But advertising can have further effects. It can remind you why you bought the product, and give you added confirmation that you made the right decision. It can make you feel good about having bought the product - perhaps before the mass audience discovered it. It can prompt you to think of friends and family that might appreciate the product, perhaps as a Christmas gift, or perhaps just as a personal recommendation. It can prepare you to buy another future product - perhaps the movie sequel. So advertising to the converted isn't necessarily wasted - we just need to find different ways of measuring the effects.

In the past, advertisers have had little choice - advertisements were broadcast to a large and undifferentiated audience. With modern technology it starts to be possible to target advertising very precisely, so that for example advertisements are never screened to people who have already bought a given product. This kind of thing can make advertising more efficient at achieving a narrowly defined effect.

But this means that the broader effects of advertising to the converted are lost. Without subsequent reinforcement from further advertising plus word-of-mouth, a larger proportion of purchasers may come to regret their purchase, and even to distrust future advertisements. Narrow efficiency is gained, but at the cost of a broader and deeper effectiveness.

So we sometimes need to be suspicious of technologies that appear to deliver some effects more efficiently. Are they the right effects? Are there some other beneficial effects we might be losing? What is the real purpose of change?

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