As sales lag at home, U.S. tobacco firms try to conquer Asia and East Europe. In Hong Kong, Philip Morris once bought every newspaper front page to push Marlboro.
Let health groups call them drug pushers; let members of Congress hand them their heads. U.S. cigarette makers are riding high, now that the world is Marlboro Country.
Americans keep smoking less, but tobacco companies are finding more than enough foreigners to take their places. From the smoke-filled cafes of Eastern Europe to the billboard jungles of Asia, the firms are out there pitching–often using TV and other strategies they cannot use at home:
* In China, the world’s biggest tobacco market, Philip Morris has become the financial angel of professional soccer, underwriting the Marlboro Soccer League, named for the company’s flagship brand.
* In Prague, capital of the Czech Republic, R.J. Reynolds has marched couples down the aisle in “Camel” weddings, complete with Camel-insignia taxis to shuttle the guests.
* In the Philippines, Asia’s most Roman Catholic nation, promotional calendars display U.S. and local cigarette brands under a picture of the Virgin Mary.
* In chain-smoking Eastern Europe, the U.S. companies are becoming a huge force in cigarette manufacturing, with Philip Morris and Reynolds between them having entered into 14 joint ventures with state tobacco companies.
Here at home, tobacco companies are circling the wagons, fighting to save what they can of a shrinking market. But the industry’s big three–Philip Morris, R.J. Reynolds and Brown & Williamson–are seizing new turf in the developing world, where smoking is on the rise and American cigarettes still symbolize elegance and style.
Read more: http://articles.latimes.com/1994-11-17/news/mn-63842_1_philip-morris
