~

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Consumer vulnerability is often described in terms of consumer characteristics or demographics such as age, disability, gender, race/ethnicity, low or limited literacy, and level of education. In general, these measures are useful indicators of potential vulnerability, and most government departments, large institutions and commercial businesses use these to operationalise their vulnerability and disability programs and policies.

But recent research suggests that there is no empirical proof that biophysical characteristics of individuals should be the sole basis on which to define consumer vulnerability. In fact, consumers might be vulnerable due to transient stages or short-term and less concrete states such as grief-related vulnerability, stress, ego-depletion or fatigue.

Even external conditions can contribute to vulnerability. Impoverished consumers, for example, have been shown to be influenced by the materialism that they view in the media, while other external conditions such as a lack of access to healthcare, and lack of access to retail facilities can make life particularly difficult.

Even something as seemingly “normal” as product similarity – particularly when differences are tiny – can influence the way that a consumer processes information in a purchasing decision. What this means is that cognitive vulnerability, as much as other vulnerabilities, needs to be a focal point when deciding if consumers are vulnerable. Indeed, any consumer – not just those of a certain demographic profile or those with a specific, measurable disability – can experience loss of utility in a range of seemingly benign situations, including those where they are exposed to unethical means of marketing, or are required to make choices under pressure. As the former head of the department of psychology at the University of Chicago, Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, has said, “when consumers are unable to control their attention, behaviour, or emotions, then their responses are beyond their control, aversive and part of their experience of vulnerability”.

It is surprising (and disappointing) then, that despite a greater awareness of the complexity of vulnerability amongst researchers, consumer advocates and policy specialists, our consumer protection regulations do not allow for a more comprehensive perspective of the vulnerable consumer that is both holistic and multi-dimensional. This is despite the fact that in 2005, seminal work in the field of consumer vulnerability, led by Dr Stacey Baker at the University of Wyoming, recommended that consumer protections should focus on actual vulnerability (rather than perceived vulnerability) and should be consumer driven. In other words, the disability or circumstances should not define the vulnerability; rather the outcome for the consumer should be the main consideration.

Public policy in many countries does not appropriately address the issue of consumer vulnerability. In Australia, the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission’s (ACCC) definition of “disadvantaged or vulnerable consumers” focuses on groups of consumers, such as those who have a low income or are from a non-English speaking background. Definitions that are limited in this way fail to consider vulnerability in a holistic manner that incorporate transient vulnerability or vulnerability due to social persuasion techniques, such as those used by marketers.

Clearly, these easily identifiable groups may be more susceptible to vulnerability, but there are also negative repercussions to defining a person as vulnerable, simply as a result of a measurable factor such as education, physical disability, or low income. If we are really serious about addressing all forms of vulnerability, a more sophisticated, and human centred approach needs to be considered.

An alternative approach might be to view vulnerability as a spectrum that is neither enduring nor binary. Spectrums have been applied in other complex contexts, where they represent a range of severity, e.g.. autism spectrum, or a range of types e.g., the bipolar spectrum. Applying a spectrum approach to the concept of consumer vulnerability (and potential protections) could be helpful in representing that any individual might experience vulnerability at a point in time. It might also be useful in recognising that vulnerability does not have to be enduring, and arises from an interaction of factors rather than a single individual characteristic.

In fact, policy makers must be careful about how they define vulnerability so as to not make it more difficult for the individual to move away from the vulnerable situation. Scholars in my own field have argued that the removal of barriers that prevent the movement from situational vulnerability to the preservation or reconstruction of one’s identity will go a long way toward achieving relevance to public policy. An examination of the vulnerability of consumers in specific situations using a vulnerability spectrum allows policy makers to readily identify public policy measures that might facilitate consumer protection.

A consumer vulnerability spectrum might also be useful in assisting with proactive policy development. One of the problems with a state-based view of consumer vulnerability is that it assumes consumer vulnerability is triggered by factors external to the consumer, which leads to a reactive approach from public policy. An alternative frame might be to consider how consumer vulnerability can be tackled at earlier stages, through a more anticipatory or pre-emptive approach, similar to that suggested by ASIC chairman, Greg Medcraft.

We know from research in the area of decision-making that once a consumer has made a “bad” decision it can be difficult to rectify, partly due to the psychological pressure that makes it difficult for us to admit that we make poor decisions (which psychologists refer to as the disconfirmation bias) and partly due to the practical barriers created by institutions when consumers attempt to resolve a problem. Policy that takes a more comprehensive perspective of the vulnerable consumer and is holistic and multi-dimensional should include internal factors such as psychological processes, and thus be more proactive in nature.

Ultimately, consumer policy should be directed toward facilitating individual empowerment. Policy informed by a consumer vulnerability spectrum will place the consumer at the centre, providing the best chance for facilitating fairness.

Despite the current “hoo-ha” arising from the ACC report into organised crime and drugs in sport, it is unlikely that lots of fans will stop supporting their sport.

We are surprisingly poor judges of how a particular event will make us feel into the future. In other words, we rely on how we feel right now to predict how we might feel about something later. Psychologists call it affective forecasting.

Something to remember as we head into #AustraliaDay twitter.com/tribalinsight/…

— Paul Harrison (@tribalinsight) January 25, 2013

During the past forty years global rates of overweight and obesity have risen dramatically. In 2010 more than 155 million children worldwide were overweight (more than one in ten) and of these approximately 30-45 million were obese, or between two and three per cent of the world’s 5-17 year-old children.

In Australia, more than 14 million people fall within the overweight or obese range, and Australia is ranked as one of the fattest nations in the developed world. The prevalence of obesity in Australia has more than doubled in the past 20 years, and children are at particular risk of overweight and obesity.

But the answer is probably not a ban on all marketing to children. In the first instance, simply the practicalities of a blanket ban would be incredibly difficult, particularly in trying to keep up with the constantly changing promotional environment.

The focus of any strategies in this field should first and foremost start with the outcomes we seek, and the realities of what currently exists, with the welfare of children as the aim.

Simply pointing fingers, blaming one group or another (including parents), using simplistic terms such as “nanny state” to create an argument, or banning specific promotional tools, is not going to be useful in the long-term.

Ultimately, a more collaborative approach between academia, industry, government, public health, and families is needed, but each group has to take responsibility, be committed to the final outcome, and each has to be serious about understanding where the harm occurs. In addition, the capacity to predict or anticipate problems in this field has to be part of the corporate, regulatory and research approach.

The common fallback, particularly from the food marketing industry, and sometimes politicians, seems to be that it is the sole responsibility of parents to impart sensible attitudes towards the purchase and consumption of healthy and unhealthy food. The problem with this argument is that this becomes a particularly onerous responsibility to place squarely, and solely, upon parents, particularly in the absence of any corresponding and equitable responsibility placed upon the food and marketing industry. While parents can restrict their children’s exposure to advertising, this is becoming more difficult, given the ubiquity and access to multiple media platforms.

And the reality is that the values of parents and marketers diverge. Simply put, marketers want to sell stuff; parents want to bring up healthy children. While not mutually exclusive, these are two very different goals.

Another major concern is the power disparity between families and industry, in that parents are individuals trying to make their way in the world, taking in huge amounts of information about the best options for their kids, while the food industry has a single focus, and all of their resources are used to attain this one goal.

My general argument is that the food industry (particularly the junk food industry) should stop pretending that they have played no role in creating the obesity crisis, nor any responsibility for making it easier for kids to eat healthy, and more difficult for them to eat unhealthily.

During the late 1950s and early 60s, marketing appeals targeting children underwent a shift from focusing on product attributes towards increased use of symbolism, classic archetypes, and appeals to cultural values. Two specific appeals that emerged in marketing a variety of products and services to children are of ‘fun’ and ‘cool’. Fun has become increasingly important element of marketing to children in recent decades, and connects sociability, maternal care, and commercial interests.

Marketing of ‘children’s food’, which has emerged as a separate product category, tends to rely less on the nutritive or functional qualities of the food, and more on symbols and signs that create and reflect meaning in a child’s world.

Even the establishment of the “child consumer” is a relatively new phenomena in marketing, and only emerged in marketing in the late seventies.

The food industry, and to a lesser extent the marketing industry, have attempted to defend their actions, by suggesting calls for action in the sector that don’t necessarily reduce the capacity to generate profits. Industry seeks to focus on the importance of a laissez-faire approach favouring market-driven strategies that stimulate consumer desire for healthier food options, rather than recognising that the marketing of unhealthy food also influences behaviour.

Self-regulation has emerged as another common response to this issue. Yet the majority of resulting self-regulation measures only target advertising, even though traditional advertising is regarded as less effective than it once was. Advertising has historically been a dominant and influential technique in marketing, but in the face of media and audience fragmentation, technological advancements (especially the proliferation of digital technologies), and more sophisticated measurement and evaluation techniques, advertising is now one of an ever-increasing number of promotional techniques used by companies to reach their targeted audience segments.

Advertising does not exist or operate in isolation from other aspects of marketing activities. Packaging, sales promotion, use of cartoon characters, in-game advertising, and celebrity endorsement are all forms of marketing used by the food industry. On their own, these activities are relatively innocuous, but when connected with junk food, they have potential to cause real harm to children. It is the linkage between multiple communication tools that results in a form of cultural wallpaper, where it is no longer simply a lot of marketing. It just forms part of our culture.

Researchers in the area of marketing call this Integrated Marketing Communication (IMC), while the food industry simply refers to this as marketing. But IMC presents a range of ethical concerns, in that it challenges caregiver authority, exploits cognitive development and processing, engages with target customer using multiple communication channels (such as online, sponsorship, promotion in schools), engages the target consumers in co-creation (by making them part of the brand), and leverages subtlety (where tactics are increasingly being integrated into traditionally non-promotional opportunities).

IMC is about synergy; about the whole being greater than the sum of the parts. Marketers who apply IMC realise this and use it to their commercial advantage. These factors don’t operate in isolation, but build upon one other in a complex and dynamic way.

This approach to promotion represents a paradigm shift away from traditional conceptualisations of marketing and advertising. Similarly, its response requires a similar paradigm shift to traditional public health responses.

The first step in this shift is recognising and understanding IMC, the broader environmental factors and dynamics that support it, and its implications in the issue of promoting energy-dense, nutrient-poor foods and beverages to young people.

The second step is to resist the call for blanket bans, but engage all parties in an honest, open and realistic dialogue to attain better outcomes for our children. This is the key – rather than finger pointing or blame shifting, the welfare of children should be the focus.

~

This piece is based upon research conducted for the book chapter, “Integrated Marketing Communications (IMC) and power imbalance: the strategic nature of marketing to children and adolescents by food and beverage companies” written by Paul Harrison and Michaela Jackson and published in Advances in Communication Research to Reduce Childhood Obesity.

An excerpt of this opinion piece was also published in the National Times (The Age, The Canberra Times, and The Sydney Morning Herald) on 28 December, 2012.

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Feeling a compulsion to spend money even though there is nothing you really need?

Don’t worry, it’s just biology. The Australian Retailers Association predicts $14.8 billion will be spent in the coming weeks, helped along by human nature and the fear that if you’re not in the shops, you’re missing out

“As human beings, you assume that if lots of people want something, then we need to be part of it – it is the scarcity effect at work,” Dr Paul Harrison, a senior lecturer in consumer behaviour and advertising at the Deakin Graduate School of Business, said.

“If lots of people want it, it has more value. If we are looking around and everyone is grabbing for towels, even if we don’t need them, we feel that if we miss out which the whole scarcity thing is; we’ll miss out on something important.

“it is an important part of what makes us human – we are really responding to animal instincts at sale time. Research has actually shown that a different form of thinking goes on in our brain when we see words like ‘sale’ or ‘free’.
We actually over ride the rational part of our brain with the emotional part of our brain, so it is a chemical process as much as anything else.”

That psychological response, Dr Harrison said, was helped along by marketing messages.

“In a positive light, I would say that people tend to respond well to marketing messages, but in a negative light, you could probably argue that people have a tendency to look at what other people are doing and what messages are being broadcast to help us to make decisions; so if we are constantly being told that these sales are amazing and lots of people are going to go there, then there’s a degree of behaviour which suggests ‘maybe if I don’t go, I’ll miss out’.

“One of the really interesting things is the way retailers are saying it is not going to be a great year, it is only a growth of three to four percent, but in reality, that kind of growth is pretty good, we just got used to unreasonable amounts of growth from the early ’90s until recently, particularly for retailers.

“So we have been trained to consume [a lot], and the post-Christmas sales are just another opportunity to consume. It has a little more hype, we tend to give it a lot more emphasis, but in reality, and everyone knows this, there aren’t that many bargains to be had and there are sales all year long now.

“It is not just the mid-year sales and the Christmas sales, so if you are thinking about it, we have been trained to respond to some degree all through the year, we just respond even more at Christmas.”

But if you do find yourself reaching for enough beach towels to keep the Australian swim team dry or returning home with more fitted sheets than you have beds, Dr Harrison said the smart way to prepare for the post-Christmas sales is just to take a breath.

And write a list.

“About what you actually need, not what you want, but what you need. And then you can decide whether you actually make any savings,” he said.

“A lot of people quite like the frantic social nature of it and if that is really what you want to do, then that is fine for you and people like you.

“But if it’s not, then don’t expect huge bargains and don’t expect to have a good time.”

Written by Amy Remeikis
Read more: http://www.brisbanetimes.com.au/queensland/biology-trumps-need-in-bargain-hunt-20121226-2bw43.html#ixzz2G92CnpzW

~

If the goal of product disclosure statement (PDS) is to help consumers make the most appropriate choices, we have to start with the consumer, rather than the document.

So, when we think about consumers, decision-making, and even consumer protection, we need to understand how people decide, and the processes they use to understand information.

And it just might be time to start again with how we protect consumers, and how we approach what we currently call the product disclosure statement.

In a sense, I would like to think of this as a new product development opportunity.

We know that people will use shortcuts when they are making a decision.

We know that people are impatient, intelligent beings.

We know that people are busy.

We know that people take risks.

We know that taking risks is not always a bad thing.

We know that most people don’t read product disclosure statements.

We know that most people don’t read the terms and conditions.

We know that most people don’t read the fine print.

And if we are going to talk about what other countries or jurisdictions are doing, or planning to do, let’s talk about their substance, and why they might work, rather than simply borrowing or copying their ideas.

In my experience, the best way to think about the potential product is to start with benefit in mind.

In marketing we talk about creating products based on the benefits that they provide to consumers.

So, let’s talk openly about what benefits we want for consumers. What do we actually want people to do?

What I am arguing is that we need to put the consumer back into consumer protection. We have to more thoroughly understand consumer behaviour, in all its complexity, before we design programs to get them to behave the way that we believe is the most appropriate way for them to behave.

So, if we are truly serious about helping consumers to make better decisions – rather than protecting our asses – then let’s approach this in a more sophisticated way.

Let’s borrow ideas from other disciplines, industries, and sectors.

Let’s think of all possible permutations and ideas, limited only by imagination and (maybe) budget that could lead to the desired behaviour.

But, this is definitely not a revisiting or re-engineering of the Product Disclosure Statement. That would be a bit like adding a computer to a fridge, which seemed like a good idea at the time, but in the end, no one was actually using it.

I hesitate to say it, but what we might be looking at is a complete re-engineering of how we approach consumer protection, knowing what we currently know about decision-making.

So how would this look?

Firstly, I want to say that there are always going to be mistakes, and there are always going to be people who make mistakes.

We don’t want to completely remove the opportunities for people to make mistakes or take risks. If people don’t take risks, there won’t be innovation.

Somehow we have to find a happy medium.

I’ll give you a few starters to think about, but these are just my initial ideas. The underlying constant is that we need to remind ourselves that we are dealing with people, not legal documents, and not something akin to a computing system.

It might be about anticipating problems.

We need people outside of the law contributing to regulation. We need alternative perspectives that somehow take into consideration the reality of human behaviour.

I would like to see this happen as legislation, policy or regulation is being drafted.

I would also like to see this as financial products are developed. What this might mean is that a regulator has to be more proactive, rather than reactive.

Perhaps regulation should go through a due diligence or stress-testing process with consumer behaviour specialists, so that we know that it is going to achieve what the lawyers are hoping it will achieve. And perhaps we need to make sure that before people sign a PDS (or whatever we end up with), they undertake a knowledge test; not asking them what they think they learned, but actually seeing what they did learn from the PDS.

And on the supply side, maybe products should also go through a due-diligence process or a product piloting. In the same way that a marketer would go through a piloting process to see if people would buy their product, maybe some products should go through a piloting process to see if they might cause harm.

And not just through a legal process – through a process that analyses potential consumer behaviour.  In the same way that we seek legal advice about consumer policy, we should also seek consumer behaviour advice. Maybe not all products, but perhaps products that have more potential for harm.

Not to necessarily rule-out risk, but simply to understand the risks.

TIME

We know that time can reduce the effects of a range of these biases.  When I say time, I am not simply referring to cooling-off periods, though.

Research I conducted into the psychology of in-home sales confirmed that the way time works to influence these biases is more complex than it seems.

My research, and other research, has found that cooling-off periods, certainly the way that most of them operate, don’t overcome many of the biases of human behaviour. The problem with the current cooling-off periods, or at least the ones I am aware of, is that they operate after we have purchased something, or signed an agreement. By then it’s too late.

The endowment effect, the status quo bias, endowed progress effect and ego protection theory all tell us that once a person “owns” something, they value it more, and are less likely to give it up – at least in the short term – particularly if they have put mental, physical or social effort into their decision.

We also know that it takes a significant amount of cognitive resources to admit we made a mistake – again, this is not a conscious use of resources, but happens regardless of how rational we think we are. The role of our ego is to protect us, so out of our conscious reach, our ego creates defences, including apathy, that restricts us from changing our mind after we have become endowed with something.

Perhaps we need to go back to the original intent and construction of cooling-off periods, which came into force before you made a final decision… or killed your neighbour.

So, if we are to have a cooling-off period clause in contracts and agreements, they have to come before the contract is signed. One way to do this is something that I call a Double-Opt In Clause. In my research into In-Home Sales, I found that once consumers had actually signed a large financial contract for a pretty poor educational software package, their likelihood of cancelling that contract within ten days (which until recently was the cooling-off period in Victoria) was remote.

But if we required cooling-off periods to start once an intention to buy was made, a consumer would have more time and resources to think about the consequences. If they had to say once, or even sign something to say that they want the product, but are not committed to it, and then sign a second document at least 48 hours after the initial intention to purchase, then we remove the pressure and the psychological biases associated with the endowment effect, ego depletion and prospect theory.

Time has that effect.

FRAMING

There has been a lot of research on how we frame information. Some refer to it as choice architecture. I don’t want to get too carried away looking at the different ways that framing effect decision-making, but I do want to mention a couple of aspects of framing.

Language

If we already know that we are unlikely to read the terms and conditions, how do we use language to get people to, at least, engage with some of the material provided to them.

Here’s some of the things that we know about language. We know that polite and formal language signifies and creates psychological and personal distance. In other words, the use of normative, polite language – the language used in business and law  – rather than colloquial, less polite language, leads participants to believe that the target of the communication (them) was spatially and temporarily distant. In research by Stephan et al. published in 2010, when participants read or heard a formal statement such as “My brother is taking our family car, so the rest of us will stay at home” they believed that that the person who was being addressed was not them, in a more remote location, and the conversation referred to something that might happen in the future. A better way to put the same statement would be,  “My brother is taking our family car, so the rest of us will be stuck at home”.

We also know that hypothetical language, such as “this may happen to you” affects the perception of distance, and concreteness, in that people don’t expect hypothetical events to occur, at least to them, and in the near future.

So, if we want people to take notice, language should be direct, immediate, and personal.

In the same vein, the layout and format of information should be more about comprehension, and less about formality. The most important information should be upfront, rather than following a more formal, logical structure. The things that you want people to read should be early and in bold. These are simple ideas, but it always surprises me how illogical, logic actually is.

And one other thing that marketing can bring to the table.

SEGMENTATION

If we are going to take decision-making seriously, one of the answers has to be related to segmentation. In marketing, when we talk about segmentation, what we mean is that we design the entire marketing program, not just the promotional or communication activities, around the different consumers we wish to persuade. So, in a practical sense, we have to avoid the tendency to go for the one size fits all approach when designing products, and also when designing consumer protection.

The challenge is that this would require a deeper understanding of consumer behaviour, and of how groups behave, and will undoubtedly need more targeted resources depending on vulnerability. It would also require a more sophisticated view of vulnerability –  beyond simplistic demographic profiling.

Segmentation is not demographics. It is about understanding what factors contribute to understanding, to attitudes and behaviours, and then designing programs that suit that particular understanding, attitude and behaviour. And we belong to different groups for different products, stimuli and activities.

All of this requires a new way of thinking.

And, without oversimplifying the issue, we have to stop being so logical, and become more strategic.

In order to achieve this, Rational Choice Theory – the Homo economicus concept – must be abandoned in favour of a more realistic view of the individual, as an agent endowed with imperfect knowledge of the factors and risks involved in a decision, and subjected to a myriad of potentially influential stimuli entering his or her decision making process.

In a nutshell, let’s start with the premise that we are all less rational than we think we are, and work from there.

~

Celebrities can successfully help promote public health say experts, despite questions about the long-term benefit that might be delivered from hiring a publicity magnet to promote a cause.

In two articles published this week in BMJ, University of Sydney professor of public health Simon Chapman, and Geof Rayner, honorary research fellow at London’s City University debate the case for and against involving celebrities in public health campaigns.

Professor Chapman writes there are some uncomfortable subtexts just beneath the disdain for celebrity engagement in health.

“The main one seems to be an arrogant “what would they know?” reaction. Celebrities are not experts … but playing to the media’s appetite for those experiencing health problems, celebrities often speak personally and bring compelling authenticity to public discourse.”

There are some great examples where a celebrity has contributed to positive change or built momentum in public health campaigns, said Tahna Pettman, research fellow in public health evidence and knowledge translation at the University of Melbourne. She cited Jamie Oliver and his Ministry of Food as one example.

“Government Public health nutritionists have been trying to advocate for decades about healthy food supply in communities and schools, and Jamie swans in with his gravitas and manages to win government support in establishing healthy school lunches, a foundation to promote healthy cooking, and even win over a few corporates.”

Professor Chapman cited Kylie Minogue’s breast cancer as one example where publicity led to an increase in women getting screened for the disease. He also noted it led to an increase in young women at very low risk seeking mammograms and as a result being exposed to unnecessary radiation and false positive investigations.

“The ambivalence about “the Kylie effect” reflects enduring debate about the wisdom of breast screening, but it should not blind us to the potential value of celebrity engagement in important causes,” Professor Chapman wrote.

Dr Pettman said it was important to evaluate the role of celebrities in social marketing activities to establish what was beneficial and what was harmful.

However Paul Harrison, senior lecturer in the Graduate School of Business at Deakin University, said it would take more than celebrity endorsement to change people’s behaviour.

“The action itself has to be easily linked to the endorsement, so with Kylie Minogue people went to BreastScreen, it was able to be linked, whereas eating healthy is quite abstract … it’s not as simple as getting a mammogram, you have to change your thinking about food and adapt your life.”

Dr Harrison said the behaviour being encouraged also had to be normalised, reinforced and easy.

“In a health campaign you can say “you should eat healthy”, but if it’s difficult for people to get their head around it or find it a challenging to eat healthy, then the celebrity won’t have much affect.”

Dr Pettman agreed with Professor Chapman on the need for public health campaigns to be sustained beyond their first burst.

“Having a celebrity promoting a certain message is just one strategy and we know from the evidence around public health and health promotion, to produce sustainable, equitable outcomes we need a wider multi-strategy approach.”

Dr Rayner wrote that rather than relying on media stunts, modern health campaigners “need to go on the offensive against junk food, alcohol, gambling, and other often celebrity linked, commercial propaganda”.

He added that at some point celebrity culture will begin to pall.

“Some celebrities might help, but let’s not look for saviours, buoyed by the happy thought that the work is done when a celebrity is involved. That’s a lie too.”

With this in mind, on Wednesday, Spotify – the Swedish music streaming service that gives subscribers who pay with cash, or by listening to ads, access to a huge amount of music from major and independent record labels – unveiled a global partnership with Coca-Cola. The soft drink behemoth will curate content and music for Spotify members, and according to Coke, “takes advantage of the existing Spotify relationship with Facebook and the Coca-Cola Facebook audience of over 40 million fans to create a social experience that will reach millions of interconnected consumers around the world.”

One key component of the campaign will have cans and bottles relabelled with dates from 1938 to the present. By scanning a QR code or visiting a URL on the Coke packaging, customers will be able to stream fifty of the most popular songs from each year, selected from Universal Music’s artists back catalogue.

This is the new frontier of advertising, and in the food-marketing industry, the opportunities are huge. None of that pesky, “in your face”, disruptive broadcast approach that we all think we have the capacity to resist (we don’t), but a subtle, gentle association with brands that we love and use regularly, and “in moderation” we are told, are not bad for us.

This integration of brands, across all manner of platforms, is the future of advertising. Academics call it integrated marketing communications (IMC). Marketers and advertisers just call it marketing and advertising. But what it represents is a paradigm shift away from traditional conceptualisations of marketing, located within mainstream, traditional media, such as TV or newspapers, to a point where promotional messages are so prolific, they become a form of “cultural wallpaper” – it’s there, but over time, we stop noticing it.

Whether the brand message is delivered via Spotify, Facebook, the sponsorship of a local sports club, visits from Gatorade ambassadors at your secondary school, gentle (or not so gentle) product placement in Masterchef, or even online games that don’t promote the food product, but promote the brand character (I’m looking at you, Freddo Frog), marketing is so much more than advertising; it plays an influential role in shaping our cultural norms and expectations, around all sorts of products, including the food and drinks that we buy and consume.

So, when it comes to food marketing, the number of channels being used to deliver marketing messages and the constant exposure to promotional messages for junk food both reflects and helps to reinforce the power and legitimacy that junk food marketing has come to occupy within our society. As we become more and more culturally conditioned, it is no longer “a lot” of marketing material, it simply becomes the norm.

“So what?” you say, “It’s just food marketing. We don’t have to eat it.” Except that, in reality, the whole resistance thing is tricky enough when we know we’re being exposed to advertising, but this “under the radar” approach is so gentle and incremental, that our normal capacity to reflect and evaluate is rendered virtually useless.

The argument that we should simply choose not to choose, is such an unsophisticated and naïve conceptualisation of decision-making, that (without us really noticing) marketers abandoned these traditional techniques more than a decade ago. While TV programs such as Gruen Planet feed our desire to understand more about the advertising world, in reality, much of the traditional approaches to advertising that are examined on these programs are in their death-throes.

This new terrain is about synergy across a wide range of platforms, from creative broadcasting such as product placement on TV and in film, through to focused narrow casting, such as the Coke/Spotify/Universal joint venture; with the whole being greater than the sum of the parts.

And all of these parts don’t operate in isolation, but build upon one other in such a subtle, complex and dynamic way we can’t see it happening, because we are a part of it.

When it comes to branding and advertising, much of what we are exposed to creates only marginal difference. But even small differences can tip the balance toward a particular choice, and plain packaging of tobacco products will make this kind of difference.

This is because small differences build up into larger differences, and in marketing, the game is all about increments rather than dramatic changes in behaviour.

So, if we are serious about reducing the number of smokers in our population, the removal of branding, logos and promotion on the packages of tobacco products is a small step in the right direction.

The nature of marketing

The role of branding and, more broadly, marketing has never been about making non-customers of a product become instant customers.

It’s much more subtle and complex. There’s certainly more to it than assuming that marketers only need to show a couple of ads, then sit back and wait for customers to buy their products.

This has a strong parallel with trying to get smokers to change their behaviour. The process is complex and incremental, rather than direct or immediate.

All marketing activity relies heavily on a range of tactics to move you toward purchasing particular products and brands.

In 2008, marketing professors Janet Hoek, Phillip Gendall and Jordan Louviere presented research at the Australia and New Zealand Marketing Academy Conference that found “tobacco brand imagery functions via respondent conditioning, where brand names, colours and other imagery become paired with psychological and emotional attributes. These peripheral cues act as heuristics that do not require systematic processing, but are implicitly relied on by smokers to move from their actual self to their desired self.”

That said, for any persuasive technique such as branding to work, we have to be goal-oriented. In other words, for a smoker to be converted into a non-smoker (or vice-versa), the desire for that behaviour must exist before marketing activity will work.

The problem we encounter is that factors leading to that desire are also quite complex. And that pre-existing desire can be influenced by other factors, the strongest of which is being motivated because a behaviour is normalised.

The changing face of Australian smokers

In 1945, 72% of Australian men were smokers – if nearly everybody around you is smoking, then taking up smoking is difficult to resist.

Then, the Robert Menzies’ government introduced a voluntary tobacco advertising code for television in 1966, and the Fraser government introduced legislation that banned cigarette advertising in 1976.

The normalisation of non-smoking had begun.

With the introduction of smoke-free public sector workplaces in the late 1980s, and private industry in the 1990s, it’s become very difficult for people to smoke and for others to take up smoking.

This is not just because it has been banned in work and public places, but also because of the social pressure that comes with the removal of smoking from everyday life.

By 2007, 21% of men and 18% of women were smokers.

Enter plain tobacco packets

The next step – the introduction of plain paper packaging – removes the capacity of the cigarette companies to brand their product.

On its own, this is unlikely to make hard-core smokers give up (I find it hilarious when news programs ask smokers if they will now give up smoking because of the new packaging), but as part of a continuing shift discouraging smoking, what we are observing is another kink in tobacco’s marketing armour.

Having been banned from undertaking any advertising, the major concern of the tobacco companies is that they are running out of promotion options.

And this is where the narrative becomes a bit silly.

The cigarette companies are saying the removal of branding will have no effect on consumer behaviour, while fighting to maintain branding on their products’ packaging.

Although, they argue that there is no evidence that plain packaging will have any impact on smokers, there is rigorous research – including that quoted above – that suggests otherwise.

Since 2005, a number of studies in the area of consumer behaviour have shown that generic packaging of cigarettes stimulate cessation attempts and deter smoking initiation.

Perhaps the tobacco companies only read research they commission themselves.

And there are further contradictions in their arguments. If packaging, plain or otherwise, doesn’t influence consumer behaviour, why threaten legal action against the government to keep ostensibly useless branding?

If it’s not important and doesn’t contribute to the corporate bottom line, then why spend shareholder dollars fighting it?

But the tobacco companies have given $5 million to underpin the Alliance of Australian Retailers to fight the proposals.

Their arguments that the proposals infringe international trademark and intellectual property laws also seem a little desperate.

The reason is plain packaging does influence consumer behaviour, and the tobacco companies know this. They are just not able to admit it.

Then again, the tobacco industry has always struggled to say it like it is.

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This article was originally published at The Conversation in 2011.