Philip Morris’s stop-smoking campaign is simply ‘PR puff’
The £2m wraparound ad campaign covering Monday’s Daily Mirror has been slammed as ‘staggering hypocrisy’
London — Marlboro cigarette maker Philip Morris International drew accusations of hypocrisy on Monday after using a four-page newspaper advertisement to urge smokers to quit cigarettes. The wraparound advertisment covering Monday’s Daily Mirror tabloid is part of Philip Morris’s £2m Hold My Light campaign, in which the world’s biggest international tobacco company is pushing a 30-day challenge for people to give up smoking. The campaign also features a video and a website where smokers can sign up for the challenge and gain information to help them to kick the habit. Cigarettes account for the vast majority of Philip Morris’s revenue, but the company has repeatedly stated a longer-term vision to replace cigarette sales with products such as its IQOS tobacco-heating device, which it says is less dangerous. “This is staggering hypocrisy from a tobacco company to promote its own smoking-cessation products in the UK while continuing to promote tobacco cigarettes across the world,” Cance...
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