Colorado State University Professor Launches Two-Year Study Of Tobacco Advertising's Influence On Teen-Agers
Monday, May 5, 1997
FORT COLLINS--A Colorado State University marketing
professor will study whether restrictions on tobacco
advertisements change perceptions of smoking enough to dissuade
teens from picking up the habit.
Associate Professor Kathleen Kelly will compare the effects
on adolescents of so-called tombstone tobacco advertising--black
and white ads with no pictures or other graphics--with image
advertisements that promote tobacco products using colorful
pictures and catchy phrases. The two-year study also will measure
reactions to the two different types of tobacco advertising by
teen smokers vs. non-smokers and by teens from different ethnic
backgrounds.
About 350 teen-agers in Colorado schools will participate in
the $305,000 project, funded by the Robert Wood Johnson
Foundation, a philanthropic group that funds research and
programs related to health care issues.
Kelly is currently selecting image ads and creating
tombstone ads with restrictions similar to those proposed by the
federal government. The ads will be viewed by teens in controlled
experiments next fall. The research team is still finalizing
which schools in Colorado will be involved.
"We will probably never be able to prove that certain kinds
of advertisements cause someone to start smoking, but how the
advertisements fit in as part of a person's decision to take on
those habits can be better understood with this study," Kelly
said.
"We want to know if their opinions of smoking and smokers or
expectations of how a product will perform is impacted by the
advertising to which they are exposed."
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration has proposed
regulations that would restrict tobacco companies to using only
tombstone ads in publications where youth would likely see them.
A federal judge recently upheld the FDA's overall proposal to
regulate tobacco as a drug, but did not support the agency's call
for restrictions on tobacco advertisements. President Bill
Clinton, arguing that tobacco companies are targeting teens with
image advertisements, pledged to fight for the restrictions.
But whether these kinds of restrictions are effective in
curbing teen-age smoking is unknown, Kelly said. Similar studies
on alcohol advertising show that image advertising makes an
impression on young adults. However, no research has analyzed
perceptions of smoking by teens by comparing image advertising
with tombstone advertising.
Despite legal restrictions on their purchase, Kelly points
out that alcohol and cigarettes are the two substances most
frequently used by adolescents. A recent national survey reported
that one-fourth of all eighth-grade students used enough alcohol
to get drunk and almost half of them had tried cigarettes.
"We know that advertising imagery is very attractive to
youth, which is an important fact to remember when talking about
this issue because most adults who smoke say they started before
age 18," Kelly said.
The professor's research over the past several years has
focused on the influence of alcohol and tobacco advertising on
youth. Kelly recently completed an innovative advertising
campaign in which teen-age girls from rural communities across
the country helped develop ads that stressed the dangers of
smoking and drinking during pregnancy. The $586,000 project was
funded with a grant from the Center for Substance Abuse
Prevention.
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