Stealth tobacco site troubles industry

This article is part of the Tobacco portal on Sourcewatch funded from 2006 - 2009 by the American Legacy Foundation.

Stealth tobacco site troubles industry

This is an MSNBC article published on April 18, 1997 describing a stealth marketing campaign by the Brown & Williamson tobacco company. The article features a graphic of a camel in sheep's clothing and describes a new online magazine/"fun and games" Website that appeared called "Circuit Breaker" that was designed to appeal to young men in their 20s. The site advertised local bands and musical events. Online visitors were given no clue that the site was run by a tobacco company and that most of the musical events were promotions for a new brand of cigarettes. The site offered a free T-shirt in exchange for personal information, but visitors were given no idea who was collecting the information. A media advocacy group pointed out that filtering software was unable to block youth access to the web since it didn't mention tobacco. Once it was exposed that B&W was operating the site, they took responsibility for it, but the affair raised many ethical questions about stealth advertising and promotion techniques.

Org. Author MSNBC
Date 19970418
Type INTERNET WEB SITE; NEWS ARTICLE
Bates 2084077306/7309
Collection Philip Morris
Pages 4
URL: http://legacy.library.ucsf.edu/tid/tcu16c00

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