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Marketing is generally about action. Marketers seek to create the conditions for a change to happen, for people to accomplish their goals and to satisfy their needs.
But since 1950, some marketers have worked in a different direction. To sow confusion and doubt, and most of all, to seek delay.
In 1954, facing the real threat of peer-reviewed and clear evidence that smoking caused lung cancer, the cigarette industry startled pundits by acknowledging the research and then calling for more research.
“More research” is a brilliant (if evil) tactic. It resonates with people who embrace science (since it calls for more) and it also works for people who want the status quo to remain untouched (because it calls for later).
We’ve seen this playbook used again and again. In the face of reality, big companies simply stall. And they’ve discovered that when the problem is chronic, nuanced and complex, they can stall for a very long time.
Because we choose to not understand. We’d prefer to pretend that we can wait. We accept that maybe, more research will pleasantly surprise us.
Did you catch the lie?
Did you catch the lie?
Sir Austin Bradford Hill CBE FRS(8 July 1897 – 18 April 1991) was an English epidemiologist and statistician, pioneered the randomised clinical trial and, together with Richard Doll, demonstrated the connection between cigarette smoking and lung cancer. The "recent reports on experiments with mice" was actually a series of studies, using a case-control study comparing lung cancer patients with matched controls conducted by Richard Doll and Hill of University of Cambridge, in England. Based on their personal observations during WWII, they were doing a long-term prospective study of smoking and health. This was an investigation of the smoking habits and health of 40,701 British doctors for several years - The study, published in the British Medical Journal, found that the lung cancer patients were more likely to be heavier smokers than the other cancer and non-cancer control patients.
And, how successful was this technique?
And, how successful was this technique?
From 1954, when Hill & Knowlton first started working with the tobacco industry, to 1961, the number of cigarettes sold annually rose from 369 billion to 488 billion, and the annual per capita consumption rose from 3344 to 4025 cigarettes.[11]
Action on Smoking and Health was formed in 1967 by John F. Banzhaf III, and a distinguished body of physicians, attorneys and other prominent citizens who saw the need for an organization to represent nonsmokers’ rights.
1960s and 1970s, How to Lie with Statistics became a standard textbook introduction to the subject of statistics for many college students. Themes of the book include "Correlation does not imply causation" and became one of the best-selling statistics books in history.[1] His books have been published in over 22 languages, and continue to be used in classrooms the world over.
The US Congress passed the Contraband Cigarette Trafficking Act of 1978, a law which makes cigarette smuggling a felony punishable by up to 5 years in federal prison
US Congress did nothing until 46 state attorneys general pressured them into finally passing the 1998 Master Settlement Agreement between major tobacco companies. Why did it take 50 years to pass this legislation?
In 2010, The cumulative revenue of US tobacco taxation exceeded $32 billion.
As a result of the tobacco industry's successful manipulation of science, these tactics are still used today in debates on a wide variety of subjects including global warming, food, and pharmaceuticals.[17]
Sold as an introduction to statistics for the general reader... Written by Darrell Huff in 1954, who was a tobacco lobbyist.[2]
On March 22, 1965, Derrell Huff testified at hearings on cigarette labeling and advertising, accusing the recent Surgeon General's report of myriad failures and 'fallacies'. [4]
Notes:
Notes:
December 15, 1953, led by Paul Hahn, the head of American Tobacco, the six major tobacco companies (American Tobacco Co., R. J. Reynolds, Philip Morris, Benson & Hedges, U.S. Tobacco Co., and Brown & Williamson) met with public relations company Hill & Knowlton in New York City to create an advertisement that would assuage the public's fears and create a false sense of security in order to regain the public's confidence in the tobacco industry. The tobacco companies fought against the emerging science by producing their own science, which suggested that existing science was incomplete and that the industry was NOT motivated by self-interest. With the creation of the Tobacco Industry Research Committee, headed by accomplished scientist C.C. Little, the tobacco companies manufactured doubt and turned scientific findings into a topic of debate. By amplifying the voices of a few skeptical scientists, the industry created an illusion that the larger scientific community had not reached a conclusive agreement on the link between smoking and cancer.
Goodman, Michael J. (September 18, 1994). "Tobacco's Pr Campaign : The Cigarette Papers". Los Angeles Times. ISSN 0458-3035. Retrieved November 7, 2017.
Seth Godin provided this link to ads targeted specifically at women from that campaign
Mark Twain popularized the saying in Chapters from My Autobiography, published in the North American Review in 1907. "Figures often beguile me," Twain wrote, "particularly when I have the arranging of them myself; in which case the remark attributed to Disraeli would often apply with justice and force: 'There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies, and statistics.'"[4] [1]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lies,_damned_lies,_and_statistics
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