Judgementday¶
Phillip Morris is pissed.
Pissed that they can’t shovel they products right into the customers face and ask them to buy it. All tobacco is hidden in a neutral box. No exceptions, no excuses. P.M. (word-wide know for the distribution of a addiction and cancer creating product, sold as live-style thinks that this isn’t fair and they probably calculated the loss of profit they have by people not trying their product for the first time. The loss must be bigger than the costs for the trial, otherwise they wouldn’t have gone to court now. The reasoning: New brands are being discriminated.
Well, discrimination is only possible against individuals, as far as I know. Companies and brands aren’t individuals. But the word discrimination triggers some reflexes - nobody likes being discriminated. But there are a lot of things that should be treated less acceptable.
I’m already looking forward to more commercials, more present products, more paper displays telling me what I have to try to be cool. This will not decline the end of the west, but it’s bullshit in my eyes and just creates more antipathy for that company and the people involved for me. Arguing that especially new brands have it much harder to get on the market that way, - well, let me answer like that: That’s the whole point! First of all who would believe a company would really care about competition? Nobody. So they’re talking about their own new brands… which nobody needs from a health perspective point of view.
But their current situation is like that:
All kind of advertising is forbidden.
Visible display of tobacco is forbidden. (which could be IMHO used to circumvent the previous one).
No free samples.
No discount on tobacco.
No automats for self-usage.
No non-labeled tobacco.
No protection against regulation of ingredients.
No selling of tobacco or anything similar to people under the age of 18.
No smoking on places like public transport or bars, cafes, restaurants, meeting-rooms, work-places or anywhere where a couple of people meet.
This list makes it quite nice to live when you’re not smoking, not that nice when you smoke, but you’ve chosen it yourself then. It makes it quite hard when you’re trying to sell this shit. Well - you save a lot of money on the advertising and marketing side, but that’s wasted money anyway, I think. Being the worlds biggest tobacco company, you shouldn’t worry too much about that.
In marketing a product seem to be anything that can be offered to a market that might satisfy a want or need. That it’s basically creating that need itself and just satisfying it for a short time. Hmm.. like lawyers or am I wrong?