Plain packaging could have unintended consequences, says branding expert

There was an interesting discussion about plain packaging on RTE Radio 1 yesterday.

It featured Kathleen O'Meara of the Irish Cancer Society; Sandy Dunlop, an Irish-based "branding expert"; and Forest's John Mallon.

John did a great job but he and O'Meara said pretty much what you would expect them to say, so it was Dunlop's contribution that particularly caught my ear.

He began by agreeing with Ireland's former health minister James Reilly who was quoted saying the cigarette box is the "last billboard" for cigarette companies.

After a brief debate about the importance of Marlboro Man, Dunlop suddenly changed tack and warned of the negative consequences of plain packaging. It's worth quoting in full:

Another issue is if you go too hard on an area you could make the category cool because of its prohibition. An example would be drinking in the States when they had Prohibition.

You gotta ask why do people do things. One of the reasons people smoke is because it's enjoyable to them. For many people it's community and friendship and if you push and push and push you might introduce the category as being exciting and adventurous.

So you can do something for one reason and have an unintended consequence that you didn't predict. Drinking in the States in the time of Prohibition would not only have been enjoyable, it could have been exciting and adventurous which is why people did these things.

Asked by the steadfastly impartial stand-in presenter Keelin Shanley, "Is there any evidence that getting rid of the branding will work?", Dunlop replied:

I don't really know what the evidence is. What I would do is why not use the techniques and marketing and some of the amazing insights from neuroscience and behavioural economics to make smoking uncool and make other behaviours cool by focussing on health?

I think that in Ireland it's actually happened around drink driving where the younger generation [accept] it is not cool to drink and drive.

I think there's other more positive ways. If you push and push and push against something you start having unintended negative consequences that you didn't predict and it may be that if all this does is make smuggling easier you're having a negative effect that you didn't intend, so I would put the energy into how branding works, and understanding that, to make other activities cool, make health cool, and the consequences of that could be smoking becomes less and less cool.

So there we have it – a "branding expert" spells out one of the negative consequences of plain packaging and suggests a better policy might be to "make health cool".

I'm not sure I would give the state that responsibility but the principle – accentuate the positive – makes sense.

Click here for the full discussion.