Tobacco Firms Deny YouTube Adverts Link

Source from:  Yahoo News 08/27/2010

Leading tobacco companies have rejected claims they have been bypassing advertising bans by using YouTube. Skip related content. The companies categorically denied suggestions by researchers at New Zealand's University of Otago that they are using social networking sites to get round ad restrictions. In a study published in bmj.com, the Wellington-based researchers appear to question the number of "very professionally made" video clips on YouTube referring to tobacco brands. Their conclusions come after looking through the first 20 pages of video clips containing any reference to five tobacco brands, analysing 163 relevant clips - of which more than 20 appeared to be professionally made. But when approached by Sky News, two major brands involved in the study denied the claims. Some said they had even gone as far as asking YouTube to remove videos that infringed their intellectual property rights. A spokesman for British American Tobacco, one of the companies behind Benson and Hedges, said: "It is absolutely not our policy to use social networking sites such as Facebook or YouTube to promote our tobacco product brands, and not even the authors of this report claim we have done so. "Using social media could breach local advertising laws and our own International Marketing Standards, which apply to our companies worldwide. "Our employees, agencies and service providers should never use social media to promote our tobacco brands." Philip Morris USA, who market Marlboro and L&M, said: "Philip Morris USA does not post cigarette brand marketing videos on YouTube. "In fact, PM USA has communicated with YouTube in the past asking them to remove YouTube video content that it believed infringed on PM USA's intellectual property rights." The industry has always strongly denied advertising on the internet and a number of companies signed a voluntary agreement made in 2002 that restricted direct advertising on websites. The authors of the study looked at four of the world's top tobacco brands: Marlboro, L&M, Winston and Mild Seven as well as Benson and Hedges. The videos associated with Marlboro were the most heavily viewed, totting up an average of almost 104,000 views each, with one attracting two million views alone. Almost three quarters (71%) of the content found was classified as "pro-tobacco", with less than 4% classified as "anti-tobacco". Most (70%) of the sample clips contained brand images of people smoking branded tobacco products. Most video clips for every brand studied, except Marlboro, contained brand content or the brand name in the title. Out of 40 Marlboro videos, 39 had the name Marlboro in the title while 33 appeared to be related to the brand - the image of a man on a horse or the Marlboro advertisement theme, the authors said. "The findings of this study suggest that there are many highly viewed videos on YouTube that contain specific tobacco brand content, much of it likely to appeal to youth," say the authors. "Even with a conservative methodology, a majority of this content is pro-tobacco and most of the videos analysed contained either someone smoking or tobacco brand content. "It is disturbing to note that some of the pro-tobacco videos appeared to be of a professional standard, many followed similar themes within a brand and large numbers contained images or music that may be copyrighted to tobacco companies but have not been removed." Archive material of celebrities and films, sports, and music were the most common content themes in the 163 clips - all those were likely to appeal to young people, the authors said. Enditem