Dr. Helen McAvoy:

The tobacco marketing strategy is alive and well. We see a large amount of product placement and so on. The strategy is now also about diversifying and promoting products with the direct or indirect suggestion that they are less harmful to health. For example, there was much promotional activity on heat not burn products in the UK. There is a challenge about whether they should be classed as tobacco products because they are not combustible but are heated; therefore, they may be outside the exact regulatory definitions, etc.

All of the marketing techniques relating to celebrity endorsements and very strong gender-based messages around sex appeal that we have seen before are being used for e-cigarettes. It is a different world now with celebrity influencers on social media, which was not around when the tobacco industry marketing was in its heyday. The challenge is the access that this form of marketing has to everyone who has a phone, including children and young people. That would be my observation. The marketing strategies are very clearly along gender lines and they are speaking to messages of freedom and personal empowerment. When the tobacco industry co-opted the feminist movement, it presented tobacco as providing more opportunities and more freedoms in life. We need to be very careful about the messaging that comes from there when they are targeting particular market segments.