Corporations are not inherently evil. They are motivated above all to make a profit. But when the use of a product entails significant risk, often corporations through marketing and advertising act purposefully to encourage their customers to mindlessly accept that risk.
Current controversy about new the requirement for graphic warnings on the packaging of tobacco products in the United States can be considered in this context. In many nations including Canada, tobacco companies have been required to include large and graphic color photographs illustrating the harmful effects of smoking, showing for example a preterm infant, impotence, rotten teeth, cancerous lung tissue and a dead body. Examples of images from all over the world, most considerably more graphic than those to be required in the United States, can be seen at an excellent website maintained by Physicians for a Smoke-Free Canada with assistance from the Canadian Cancer Society.
http://www.smoke-free.ca/warnings/canada-warnings.htm
This website also cites extensive research demonstrating that these images are in fact effective in curtailing smoking, resulting in significant decreases in projected long-term health care costs.
But, is it fair to require companies to include graphic, ugly, and unpleasant images on their products?Two tobacco companies have argued it is not, citing the First and Fifth Amendments.
Emerging research on decision-making has found that emotion plays a critical role in reaching optimal judgments, and although often overlooked in much academic research on persuasion, emotions are employed with great effectiveness in advertising and marketing. A brief consideration of the majority of advertisements and commercials reveals that they are not intended only to demonstrate specific features of products that are useful to consumers. Rather, they are designed to associate the product with positive emotions, a process termed branding. The product is presented with uplifting music in the context of vigorous, strong, beautiful, and healthy people loving, having fun, and enjoying life; and expressing associated positive emotions of pleasure, pride, satisfaction, accomplishment, and power. Sometimes these efforts can weaken legitimate safety concerns. Even when warning information is required, as in television advertisements detailing the possible side effects of drugs, it is typically presented to the accompaniment of soothing music in pleasant, reassuring contexts, so that it is likely that the viewer will overlook and dismiss the dangers.
Advertising campaigns for tobacco products have long promoted unhealthy smoking behavior by linking their brands to positive images and emotions in messages that have been directed particularly at young people. Such advertisements have been utilized with great success for decades, effectively creating sustained increases in tobacco use and diverting attention from potentially harmful effects, resulting in the mindless acceptance of risk on the part of consumers. These enormously effective emotional appeals belie the small "warning labels" currently imposed on tobacco and alcohol packaging in the United States. These warnings are not effective because they are not noticeable and they do not evoke emotion.
To be effective, a warning must command attention, stimulate memory, evoke emotion, convey consequences, and communicate safe behavior. An effective warning must therefore be conspicuous, memorable, and unpleasant. Because of this, effective warnings interfere directly with the goals of branding. There is consequently a long history of conflict between commercial manufacturers and advocates for public health.
Effective emotional risk messages in the public health field have the potential to counter the harmful emotional appeals from the advertising industry, and the requirement for cigarette packages to include large color photographs illustrating the harmful effects of smoking is an excellent example of this. The warning is prominent when the product is purchased, thus commanding attention and evoking emotion, reminding the customer of the many devastating consequences of smoking, and supporting a decision to resist the use of this highly addictive substance. Also, as it is well known that even highly unpleasant images can lose their impact with repetition, it is important that they be regularly refreshed to maintain their effectiveness. Although these images are unpleasant and upsetting, they are necessary to counter the successful efforts of the tobacco industry to encourage the mindless acceptance of risk. Considering long-term goals of protecting health and saving health care costs, it must be concluded that this is a highly desirable and cost-effective technique.
