Clause 8 - Prohibition of Free Distributions
Tobacco Advertising and Promotion Bill
4:30 pm
Mr Kevin Barron (Rother Valley, Labour)
I would not say that the hon. Lady misled the Committee about coupons this morning, but Staffordshire pottery is not the only thing that people can get from the tobacco companies. I thought that I should intervene to say exactly how coupon promotions come into the public domain. I have a Gratis catalogue that was published by Benson and Hedges in 1996. Complaints were made about it to the Advertising Standards Authority, or to the subdivision of the ASA that dealt with cigarettes at the time. It advertises many things, including children's skateboards, helmets, toys and garden tools. Other brands even offer international flights.
Those promotions are not just little knick-knacks for people to put on their sideboards. Coupons are big business, as the hon. Member for Ryedale (Mr. Greenway) pointed out on Second Reading. People may assume that they are simply
a bonus that people get for smoking cigarettes and that it is not connected with anything else to do with cigarettes, such as their promotion. It is clear that if people are collecting vouchers, they will stick with a brand, because that is how they get the coupons for children's toys, or whatever. There are no iron lungs in the catalogues, but there are other things that they might find useful at some stage.
Some evidence on smoking was published in a report by the Select Committee on Health last June. A qualitative research summary report—``Brand equity check for Benson & Hedges in conjunction with exploration of the Gratis catalogue loyalty scheme''—was prepared for Gallaher by Colquhoun Associates in June 1996, around the time of the objections to the Gratis catalogue on the grounds of what people believed it promoted. Colquhoun Associates looked at the effect of the Gratis catalogue scheme and how it operated at the time. The Select Committee report, appendix 26, says:
``Benson & Hedges sponsorship of Formula One is entirely coherent with expectations and offers the brand many opportunities to capitalise on positive associations. For instance, by sponsoring Formula One respondents claimed it made them believe that Benson & Hedges was a big, major league, very powerful brand with plenty of money. It also lent associations to the brand with young, fast, racy, adult, exciting, aspirational but attainable environments. It was coherent with all that respondents knew of the brand but also extended associative territory to make the brand more youthful, more dynamic and more exciting.''
The point is that coupons are not just about getting something back for smoking a particular brand. They aid to the promotion of cigarettes, and clearly lead to wider identification. The difficulty that faces the Committee is how to pull apart advertising and promotion, which are interlinked as they sell positive images about tobacco in our society. That interconnection has been identified in different reports over many years. We must recognise that the coupon scheme, in part defended by the Opposition at one of our earlier sittings, is nothing more than the promotion of cigarettes.