If you’ve bought today’s Times newspaper you may have seen this page printed in there.

Times advert on Plain Packaging

(Click to on the image to see a bigger version)

On Monday, Health Secretary Andrew Lansley launched a three-month long public consultation on the future of tobacco packaging. What is up for discussion is whether the colourful and slickly designed tobacco packaging should be removed.

This would be replaced by packs of uniform size, shape and colour. We’d like to see large picture health warnings on the front and back. This would help reduce the appeal of tobacco and help give young people one less reason to start smoking.

100,000 people in the UK die from smoking related diseases each year. Eight out of 10 lung cancer cases are caused by smoking.

We expect opposition to this measure – the advertisement illustrates why the tobacco industry values packaging so much.

As you can see in the ad above, in their words:

“Our final communication vehicle with our smokers is the pack itself. In the absence of any other marketing messages, our packaging… is the sole communicator of our brand essence. Put another way: When you don’t have anything else, our packaging is our marketing.

For more information visit our campaign website – The Answer is Plain.

Paul