Tobacco Industry BRAINWASHED the World! Genius Marketing Strategy Explained - FutureIQ

7,265 views Wait, is this logic right? • Jul 05, 2024

Slog Reference: Tobbaco politics

Description

The case study of how the Tobacco industry made the world think cigarettes and other nicotine products are good is one of the most fascinating aspects of marketing in the last century. We dive a little deeper into the genius and evil marketing tactics introduced by the tobacco industry that we still see in some form or the other everywhere.

Understand the correlation between smoking and lung cancer, how tobacco companies fought the initial criticism, why doctors were recommending cigarettes even after the evidence was against that, and more in this episode.

Hope you enjoyed FutureIQ by Navin Kabra and Shrikant Joshi. Do hit us up on Twitter:
@ngkabra http://twitter.com/ngkabra
@shrikant https://twitter.com/shrikant

Listen it on the podcast provider of your choice: https://tapthe.link/FutureIQRSS
Watch other episodes of The FutureIQ podcast: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLAppTB0r5_TaYueZ0adD42Wiw5X-wTE4v

More videos for you:
Diamonds are a scam: https://youtu.be/EjJ4GmcgukU
Politics makes you dumb: https://youtu.be/q3iroqvt8Vo

More resources for you:
A frank statement: https://web.archive.org/web/20090215235721/http://www.tobacco.org/Documents/dd/ddfrankstatement.html

Chapters:
00:00 Introduction
00:40 Smoking & lung cancer
02:00 Correlation is not causation
03:44 How tobacco companies fought back?
07:50 Hypocrisy of tobacco companies
09:47 Governments vs cigarette companies
10:15 Why doctors supported it?
12:35 Why does it matter now?
13:05 Techniques used by Tobacco companies
15:59 FUD

#futureiq #marketingstrategy #tobacco

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Transcript

- smoking causes lung cancer this has been more or less suspected for 100 years known with proof since 1950 until 1990 the tobacco industry managed to convince large parts of the world that this is probably not true right yeah using a bunch of social engineering techniques and now a whole bunch of other people political parties Industries Etc are using the same Tech techniques to keep us in the dark for other things right yeah you know what worries me about this whole thing is that they managed to do it for a hundred years yes so let's let's look at the history right that until World War I okay lung cancer was not really a known thing yeah I mean

0m 50s entire doctors could go through their entire life without running into a lung cancer patient okay and then suddenly lung cancer shot up okay M people were wondering why and pretty soon Bunches of people figured out that because cigarette production got industrialized large scale production happened in late 1900s and that caused Mass consumption of cigarettes and that was causing lung cancer right actually from 1800s itself uh some doctors were pointing out that this is dangerous this is probably causing some problems by around world it was clear that very likely the cause is cigarette in 1929 a German scientist Fritz liant came up with data showing correlation between smoking and lung cancers not only that his second set of

1m 48s data also showed explained why lung cancer in men is four five times more common than lung cancer in women simply because women smoked so much less right and what do you think at this point the tobacco industry said correlation is not causation but that statement is true right correlation is not causation yes I mean you know in that sense yes windmills are correlated with wind but windmills don't cause wind right the wind causes windmills but yeah an entire episode on that uh check it out if it is ready you'll already see a link if it is not subscribe and you'll get a notification when that episode is ready technically yes but in reality no okay U there were

2m 35s a lot of experiments and Not only was the correlation strong but they've also showed a mechanism by which this was caused they got rid of a whole bunch of these correlations right so uh in 1948 through 54 Richard doll a scientist from UK had multiple studies which showed that's not just correlated but it is CA cusing right because they looked at lung cancer patients other cancer patients non-cancer patients and saw that only this set has smoking in it right yeah uh before this study uh the industry used to say things like oh automobiles have increased roads have increased factories have increased any of those might be causing lung cancer as best but in this it was clear that only lung cancer is

3m 27s going up other cancers are not affected right in 1952 this did an animal study in which they actually introduced tobacco tar and it caused cancer in those animals right so direct caus was also shown wow okay uh lots of studies right and around this time you know science was very well regarded right science had given us such great things in that Century people used to think of science as an amazing thing that is reduced a little bit in recent times yeah but at that time science was well regarded so it began having an effect yeah okay cigarette sales went down and the stock price of the industry fell and I'm pretty sure the tobacco companies

4m 12s did not take that lying down no no they fought back right so this is one of the great case studies what the top six tobacco companies did right was they got together they said we have to do something about this they hired a PR firm okay by the way we have talked about PR films before the diamond industry has also used it very very effectively check out that episode yeah okay it's called Diamonds Are a scam if you're looking for it what they figured out was the following that people like science so simply denying this will not work right we have to do something else right so first thing they decided was we have to make the link appear

4m 55s non-conclusive that oh well we're not sure right blame other causes like you know miners smelters Farmers these people are getting lung cancer so maybe it is pesticides maybe it is soil dust right maybe it is genetic okay second thing they did was create their own science fight science with science ouch find scientists who don't believe the existing science or fund scientists who will come up with studies to show that oh there can be other causes right wow shady and half also it is possible right when scientists do studies some studies actually come back and say well it does cause cancer what do you do in that case just hide that study don't tell anyone but when a scientist does come up and

5m 45s say well no there are these other causes it looks unclear those studies you publicize and then once you have found a few scientists and a few studies that cast doubt publicize the he heck out of them and then use that to say oh well there is no scientific consensus on this topic where have we heard this phrase before uh in a lot of places but in my my first thought goes to the entire vaccines cause autism debate yes also climate change also climate change also antix people after this covid pandemic and the covid vaccinations so many so many places this entire Playbook Playbook has been used it seems and most importantly what they did was they came up with a

6m 32s document it's a two-page document we put a link here read it okay this was document was called a Frank statement huh okay in that document what they said was Research indicates there are many possible causes of cancer there is no agreement amongst experts there is no proof that smoking is a cause and here is a statement I'm going to read because it is so awesome the statistics purporting to link cigarette smoking with the disease could apply with equal force to any one of the many other aspects of modern life indeed the validity of the statistics themselves is questioned by numerous scientists wow notice they didn't stop here they went further okay they told people look

7m 21s we promise smoking is safe but if you're still not convinced we will do research okay not just that but this research is not motivated by self-interest so we will help and find neutral research okay we will cooperate with all the authorities and we will show that smoking is not causing cancer okay do you know what the reality was what reality was when they put out this statement huh they knew that smoking does is not safe okay they tried finding a safer alternative to smoking okay because they knew that oh this entire business could go away so we should do something else but that project was cancelled because it would mean if people found out that the

8m 16s companies are working on an alternative the world would realize that smoking is not safe right they also did things like reduced concern of people by adding filters milder smoke tar and nicotine and so on right when they say oh we will just mild there is ultra mild also there are different kinds of Milds now they did help with research yeah but that research wasn't to find whether smoking causes cancer it was just general research on cancer right and when any of that research actually resulted in showing a link they never publicized that research but if there was research showing oh well it's unclear any other cause which is even slightly correlated they would publicize that research there

9m 04s is a wonderful movie uh on on all of these PR Shenanigans called Thank You for Smoking which is absolutely beautifully done uh but uh how did we finally get to know all of these Shenanigans is is the question right I mean when I say that they knew cigarettes are unsafe then knew right that they were funding these Alternatives the reason is because they told us okay I mean in the sense that there were internal documents showing all of this okay and there were some people working in those companies who felt so guilty that they were whistleblowers right they sent this to authorities much later in 1998 I think there was when it was fairly clear that cigarettes does cause

9m 52s cancer uh governments sued the cigarette companies and uh proved that they knew all of this by in the during the court case all those their internal documents came out and they were used to prove that these cigarette companies were just lying outright lying to us right so we are not guessing these things we know for sure yeah and it it breaks my heart that the scientific community that the medical community went along with them the doctors supported them there are a few reasons for this right the most obvious reason is is that they were paying a bunch of doctors and if those doctors came up with studies contradicting what the cigarette companies wanted the money would go away

10m 38s so some people definitely did that but there were doctors who didn't do it for the money okay a lot of doctors by this time were themselves addicted to smoking okay and the way the human brain works is that if you are doing something and you want to continue doing it you find reason you find reasons for doing it right so one of the greatest U statisticians of all time Ronald fiser who invented a whole bunch of important branches of Statistics he himself thought that this whole research was [ __ ] and this Statistics didn't work because he was addicted to nicotine right but a third reason was that until then science was about infectious diseases Medical Science right oh this

11m 29s virus comes in and it causes a problem to this person right a problem like smoking which is probabilistic right if 100 people smoke so many of them will get cancer right any one case if you look at you can't prove that this cancer was caused by smoking right or you can't prove that this guy who didn't get cancer wasn't uh I mean the smoking di causing problems right so only when you look at Aggregates that you get some proof and all of these techniques didn't exist these were being invented by statisticians during this time right so I mean you're creating something new there is always people thinking well this is you know I don't know what this

12m 11s is this is all tricky so um plus it was not an acute condition right you smoke now and the concer is caused 20 years later so the connection was 10 years 10 years so yeah too far apart all of this made it easier for the scientists to go along with what the uh tobacco companies were seeing in the process what has happened is that the tobacco companies have essentially created a Playbook correct which is now being used in different areas of life of science like we were talking about uh climate change about vaccinations about uh well know same techniques are used by companies against their competitors yeah and same techniques are used by politicians against the opposing parties right and

13m 05s what are these techniques so one is you know use pseudo science blame all kinds of other causes find malleable scientists right like oh you can get proof research that patanjali works I was thinking Homeopathy but yeah both examples apply and um so even if nobody's lying just selective one-sided publication fund 100 different studies yeah and only publish the ones that support your thing there always the data is always fuzzy enough that there will be some studies showing this lies damned lies and statistics another technique is don't attack headon right and this is something we have talked about in other situations also that if I try to convince you directly there is a backfire effect right in fact you get even more

13m 59s convinced of your side and you think I'm trying to pull a fast one over you yeah because then it becomes me versus you rather than us versus the subject instead create doubt without denying okay and talk about rights and things like that right Advocate the right to smoke without actually encouraging anybody to smoke right it's like oh if he wants to I you know I don't want him to smoke but if he wants to he should be free to do that which is why cigarettes are still available today right then the ads that they used yeah right earlier they used to actually claim health benefits prolonged youth thinness attractiveness yeah these were actually advertised as such yeah but later on

14m 42s when it was clear that that is lying they switched as in switched to glamour social desirability like cool people smoke right uh get doctors to advertise right later on when doctors stopped advertising get nurses to advertise because nurses are more malleable right U and then once it stops working with a certain set of people you shift targets right men started reducing their smoking so Target women Target children Target racial minorities right for women you tell them that well this is a symbol of Liberation and equality if men can smoke and they don't want you to smoke who are they to tell you not to smoke right boys you tell them this is you know this is

15m 30s becoming a man this is how you switch from being a child to a man right and so on look up the malor man advertisements and you'll understand why this is not funny at all even today I mean smoking has been going down in the developed countries it's going still going up in developing countries because they have shifted their focus yep yep so and I mean these techniques are being used by a whole bunch of other things right basically uh a different word for similar techniques is called fud just create fear uncertainty and doubt y if you make people afraid they stop thinking clearly and then they just start listening to you yeah because at that point the fight flight F freeze

16m 13s response kicks in so even otherwise just create doubt create uncertainty and then people stop like you know I don't know which side is true anymore so you just stop thinking right it is happening with so many things in politics think think about it you have just there is enough doubt created that you say you know what I don't understand these things and so you have stopped doing reacting in any direction even for things which are clearly clearly wrong and it it worries me that I don't understand these things is becoming a regular refine among people yes in fact what we are going to do is we will do an entire episode on how politics is making

16m 53s you dumb yeah so check that out we also have an episode on correlation is not causing check that out and more generally We Get Fooled by Randomness right so we check out our series on those right so the first two that naen mentioned if they're ready by the time you are watching this we'll put them up on the screen here for you or we'll definitely have show uh notes links in the show notes and description uh the third one Fooled by Randomness we already have that episode up so definitely check that one out and let us know what you thought on either of the two episodes comment and yeah let us know Shri Kant naen future IQ