New Zealand Branded Cigarettes?
Here's another example of how marketers are quite prepared to do whatever they can to sell more of their poisonous products.
In June 2007 Te Reo Marama director Shane Kawenata Bradbrook discovered that, DFS Galleria, a chain of duty free stores in New Zealand, was selling cartons of cigarettes in black packaging featuring the well-known silver fern. The same imagery that people overseas associate with the All Blacks, the Silver Ferns, and other positive things about New Zealand was plastered all over cigarettes!
The cigarettes weren't even made here. They were from Luxembourg. That means the only reason for the New Zealand based packaging was to make them appeal to tourists moving through our airports.
The packaging also carried the words 'luxuriously mild cigarettes' because a lot of people still think mild cigarettes are less dangerous, even though the tobacco companies know full well that they are just as deadly.
In a media release about the cigarettes, Te Reo Marama said it was an insult to New Zealanders to connect the silver fern to a product causing illness and premature death. Lots of other health and smokefree groups also said they were outraged, and within a day, DFS Galleria had pulled the cigarettes from their shelves and apologised. They said they didn't mean to offend anyone.
What's up with that?
Were they too dumb to see how offensive the cigarettes were? Or did they just think it was okay to make a quick buck by polluting New Zealand's image for as long as they could get away with it?
Māori Mix?
Here's an example of how one tobacco company deliberately exploited Māori and Māori culture.
Back in 2005, tobacco giant Phillip Morris International (Altria) launched a cigarette brand in Israel specifically associated with Māori. They called it Māori Mix and put a map of New Zealand on the box along with some designs that were supposed to be Māori.
When Te Reo Marama Director Shane Bradbrook confronted them at their conference in New York, they apologised, and their Chief Executive Officer said:
"Yes, we made a mistake of launching a product called Māori Mix.
We regret that it was a mistake…
That is the only time that we've used that product…
We have apologized, and we have confirmed that
we will not be using that product anywhere in the world again.
So I apologize again to you and your people."
Thanks for that guys, but apologies don't save lives.