BY KENNY BRUNO
SAN FRANCISCO — The winner of the Winter Greenwash Award is Philip Morris, the largest US-based tobacco corporation, for its "Working to make a difference" television ad campaign.
The commercials tell us moving stories of real people's struggles, and a not-so-subtle implication that Philip Morris has been the one to help them out of a jam through corporate charity.
In particular, its commercial about a pregnant woman who leaves her abusive husband for the sake of her children, born and unborn, gets right to the pit of the stomach, through a nauseating combination of sympathy for the woman and disgust at the company using her story.
Before we look a little closer at the ads, let's review a few basics about this remarkable company.
Tobacco products kill about 4 million people annually worldwide (and that figure may rise to some 10 million, according to the World Health Organisation). Philip Morris is the world's largest cigarette manufacturer, with just about half of the US market, and over 30% of the market in at least 19 other countries.
So Philip Morris products are responsible for an astounding number of premature and preventable deaths for a single corporation.
Philip Morris executives have consciously made their products more addictive and lied about it. Flouting science, they also denied the connection between smoking and cancer and the many other tobacco-related health problems until they could no longer refute the facts.
They have spent millions to evade liability in court for the consequences of their corporate behaviour. So far, despite growing legal and regulatory constraints, and despite widespread animosity towards the company, it remains enormously profitable.
Nevertheless, at some point Philip Morris realised that things could go terribly wrong, as things had for asbestos companies driven into bankruptcy by lawsuits. It chose a two-pronged strategy to protect its financial future.
First it diversified, mainly by buying Kraft, the largest food company in the US, and more recently, Nabisco. Second, it launched a giant corporate image campaign.
This image campaign has some interesting features. First, the company has taken an enormous risk, by advertising the fact that Kraft is a Philip Morris company.
Some of the ads discuss Kraft's charitable works, but always mention that Kraft is "part of the Philip Morris family of companies". Their calculation is that Kraft's mainly benign reputation will rub off on Philip Morris, rather than PM's horrific reputation tainting Kraft brands.
They may end up wishing the American public had continued to believe Kraft was independent. INFACT, a Massachusetts-based non-profit group, has organised a boycott of Kraft foods as a strategy to put pressure on Philip Morris, and the group believes that the boycott will grow as people learn of Kraft's connection to Marlboro and Virginia Slims.
Secondly, unlike typical greenwash, there is no connection made between the company's products and their good works. No one smokes, no brand names are mentioned, and there isn't even a hint of PM's main business.
It's as if they recognise that the dissonance in mentioning Marlboro and philanthropy in the same breath would be too harsh. Yet at the same time, it allows them to get the Philip Morris name back on TV, even though cigarette ads are banned. Pretty clever.
What about the "good works" of Philip Morris. Is there anything wrong with giving money to meals-on-wheels, battered women's shelters, and flood relief? Of course not.
When you run a shelter, a concert series, or a conservation trust, and government money has dried up (largely because of policies that favour the same rich individuals and corporations you are now dependent on for private donations, but that's a longer story), you are likely to accept money from just about anywhere.
Nevertheless, the ads are misleading. While the actress in the ad about the battered wife makes many good points about the dynamics of domestic violence, it all goes awry when implying that Philip Morris is a friend of women.
Ever since "You've Come A Long Way Baby", the perverse association of cigarettes and woman's emancipation has led large numbers of women to join the ranks of smokers. In fact, six years after Virginia Slims went on the market the rate of smoking among 12-year-old girls jumped a startling 110%. By 1997, 35% of female high school students were smokers, up from 27% six years earlier, according to the Centers for Disease Control.
The ad also makes it seem like Philip Morris is especially concerned about children. But as INFACT has documented in their Making A Killing video, Marlboro Man is specifically designed to attract young smokers, and, especially in Asia, Philip Morris continues its tradition of luring young people into a lifelong, lethal habit.
Other ads imply that Philip Morris is a friend to people of colour. For example an ad depicts an elderly black woman grateful for food deliveries, "especially the tangerines".
But a few tangerines won't make up for the damage the Marlboro Man has done to African-American health, especially considering that Philip Morris has targeted black consumers. In 1999 the company developed a menthol version of its popular Marlboro brand aimed at the African-American market (76% of African-American smokers smoke menthol cigarettes).
In addition, black neighbourhoods have a higher density of cigarette bill boards and black publications, like Ebony and Jet, run more cigarette ads than mainstream magazines like Time and People.
A look at the numbers shows that Philip Morris largesse is not only self-serving, but stingy. They say they spent $115 million in 1999 on charities, making them the third largest corporate donor in the country. They are also the ninth largest company by sales ($61.8 billion), and the eighth most profitable US company ($7.7 billion), so their place in the top 10 charitable givers makes them only slightly more generous than their peers. $115 million is approximately 1.5% of PM's domestic profits.
That's slightly higher than average for a US corporation, but not wildly generous. Given the damage they have done, their giving does not begin to balance the scales.
How painful is it for Philip Morris to spend 100 million bucks? Not as painful as it is to watch my next door neighbour end his life in agony on a respirator and an oxygen machine, while the cold-hearted executives deny any connection between his emphysema and the two packs per day of Marlboros he smoked for 50 years.
Here's another comparison. In 2000, Philip Morris spent $94 million to advertise Marlboro, $118 million to advertise Kraft brands, $92 million promoting Miller beer, and $142 million on corporate image advertising. When a company spends more to boast about humanitarian programs than on the programs themselves, that's greenwash.
[From Corp Watch, a San Francisco-based research and activist centre, <http://www.corpwatch.org>.]