Cigarette Packaging. Tobacco’s silent salesman

Take a look at the different cigarette packs in the image above.

Think of them as two different groups. Four packs on the left. Four packs on the right.

Now discuss the questions for the two different groups of packs (four on the left, then four on the right).

Who are the packs targeted at? What gender are they being targeted at? What age are the packs being targeted at? Why have those colours, images and fonts been used? Why do the packs open in the way that they do? Why are the packs shaped that way? Are the packs cool or appealing?

Remember, cigarette packs are nothing more than boxes for transporting and carrying cigarettes. So why have tobacco companies put so much effort, thought and money into designing a simple box?

They’ve done it because pack design is important. Very important!

Research shows these designs both attract young people to cigarettes, and mislead them about their damaging effects. Opening a pack sideways, for example, means the size of the health warning on the front becomes relatively smaller. Pink packs, slim packs, tall packs are designed to appeal to girls. Do the slim packs on the left of the image resemble perfume packaging? Silver packs, blue packs, packs with push or flip-top opening are designed to appeal to boys. Are the silver packs designed to look a bit like mobile phones or hand-held gadgets?

Cunning design is no accident. The tobacco industry has long been working out how to modify the shape, size and opening of packs to influence whether people view cigarettes as risky or appealing.

Now that we appreciate the importance of pack design, we can begin to understand why standardised packaging for cigarettes was introduced in the UK in May 2016.

Evidence shows that standardised packaging will protect children from being attracted to start smoking. But when we talk about standardised packaging, what do we mean?

You might expect ‘plain’ packs to be white - but they aren’t. Instead, they are drab brown colour, with a matte finish. This is thanks to research from Australia, which found that dark brown colours were the most effective in lowering

cigarettes’ appeal, and led people to use words like ‘dirty’, ‘tar’ or ‘death’ when describing them.

It’s not just the colour that’s changing. Before standardised packs, cigarettes could be sold in different shapes and sizes, with different ways of opening that could mimic boxes of matches, or lighters, or hand-held gadgets. This means that the days of the glamorous thin ‘lipstick’ or ‘perfume’ packs, designed to appeal to women, are gone (although slim cigarettes are still available to buy).