Damien Mulley

As a Christmas treat I bought Thank you for Smoking:

And then I read this on the tobacco industry going all social-networky and deliciously evil too. They’re making videos of celebrities talking about why smoking is great and building a social network so employees all around the world can exchange ideas on how to market cigarettes.

The first video shows a series of photos of celebrity smokers before posing a blunt question: “And your thoughts on the smoking ban?” A young woman with wispy blond hair gazes back solemnly toward the camera: “It’s brilliant because people will stop smoking as a habit.”

Seconds later, she appears again. “If you smoke,” she adds with a faint smile, pressing a cigarette to her lips, “it’s for pleasure.”

Le Lab, an internal Web site at Altadis, is meant to be part social networking site, part data resource, part virtual pep rally. The intended audience for the site — which started in the fall — is several hundred Altadis brand managers who could use a little inspiration as cafes and restaurants around the world continue to push users of the company’s products out the door.

“The cigarette market is very difficult to work with all the legal restrictions, and we have very few tools to communicate with our brands,” said Karine Boure, the marketing manager for Altadis. “One objective of our project was to bring more insight to our marketing team so that they could be more effective, and we saw the lab as a way to pick up more ideas. That’s why it’s important to find innovative ways of working.”

Read the full article.

This entry was posted on Friday, December 28th, 2007 at 2:31 pm and is filed under business, irishblogs. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.