Can Magazines Handle theTruth.com?

Folio: The Magazine for Magazine Management, August, 2000 by Bob Moseley

Latest crusade against tobacco may leave publishers feeling ripped off

* The magazines industry is caught in the line of fire in the fight against teen smoking--again.

TheTruth.com, a Washington, D.C.-based Web site, is conducting a summer promotional campaign that encourages readers to tear all cigarette advertising out of magazines. The readers are then able to exchange the ads for merchandise at promotional events throughout the country, where representatives from theTruth.com have 150,000 T-shirts and 150,000 baseball caps to give to young people. The promotion began on June 26 and runs through August 6.

TheTruth.com campaign has four luxury buses on the road, joining local radio stations for promotional tie-ins at malls, rock concerts, water parks and other places where teenagers tend to congregate. "We've had a really good response," says Carlea Bauman, a spokesperson for theTruth.com, who adds that the campaign is "really directed at teenagers because cigarette ads turn up in magazines that teens read--like Rolling Stone, Spin, Vibe and People."

The campaign quickly follows the decision by Philip Morris--the nation's largest tobacco company--to suspend advertising in 42 magazines that have more than 15 percent youth readership (ages 12 to 17), starting in October. The move was driven by pressure from the National Association of Attorneys General. (See FOLIO: July 1, page 12.)

With state legislators having effectively nuked outdoor tobacco advertising, sources say they're now increasingly setting their sights on eradicating tobacco advertising in print.

Roberta Garfinkle, senior vice president/director of strategic print services at McCann-Erickson, says theTruth.com campaign raises an issue of "whether magazines are being led to the point where they're going to have to stop accepting tobacco ads the same way TV has because of perception and public pressure."

The Truth campaign is well funded--to the tune of $150 million a year--from the American Legacy Foundation, an organization that was established in November 1998 after the Master Settlement Agreement was reached between the states and the tobacco industry. Ironically, the Truth campaign funding comes from money paid by the tobacco companies in the settlement.

The ad that appears on theTruth.com Web site reads as follows: "Rip out the next cigarette ad you see. Because tobacco killed about 430,000 people last year and paper cuts don't kill anybody." The Web site cautions people not to remove ads from magazines they don't own.

Spot ads are running on television, radio and even magazines. Seventeen, Teen People, Spin, Thrasher, GamePro and Transworld Skate are a few of the titles carrying the anti-smoking ads. Interestingly enough, Spin also runs cigarette ads.

"We don't see any irony or conflict" in running both theTruth.com and tobacco ads, says Malcolm Campbell, publisher of Spin. "As long as both companies are advertising in a responsible manner, it would be wrong of us to reject either ad." Asked if he thought accepting both ads was sending a mixed message to Spin's audience, Campbell adds: "Our readers are sophisticated enough to make educated decisions for themselves."

Rolling Stone, GQ, Sports Illustrated, Playboy and Esquire--all of which run a fair share of cigarette ads--refused to comment on theTruth.com's tactics. Representatives at both Newsweek and ESPN The Magazine, meanwhile, say they're unaware of the campaign.

"This is the next wave," says Melissa Pordy, director of print services at Zenith Media, referring to the anti-tobacco ads. TheTruth.com campaign, along with the Philip Morris decision, "is chipping away at the iceberg of what still represents huge [advertising] revenues. This is a serious issue, and magazines need to look at other areas to offset the losses."