INTRODUCTION

For years, the US tobacco industry has used deceptive marketing tactics to mislead consumers into believing their products are less harmful than in reality¹. Some of these tactics, such as use of low-tar, light, and mild descriptors, have been restricted². However, to circumvent these restrictions, the industry has incorporated alternative strategies like greenwashing (i.e. a marketing tactic that utilizes false or unverified claims to mislead consumers about a business’s environmental practices and impact³)^4-8. The use of greenwashing content within cigarette advertisements is associated with inaccurate consumer harm and addictiveness perceptions^9-13. Greenwashing also has the potential to convey that one cigarette product is safer than another¹⁴.

Given the association between greenwashed advertising and inaccurate reduced risk perceptions, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) took action to limit one specific greenwashing strategy – the use of ‘additive-free’ and/or ‘natural’ – by the manufacturers of Natural American Spirit (NAS) cigarettes and Nat Sherman cigarettes¹⁵. Despite this, research found that both companies continued to employ a variety of other greenwashing tactics including use of terms such as ‘earth-friendly’, ‘simple’, ‘tobacco and water’ and imagery such as leaves, flora, nature and farm settings within the advertisement of their products^6,16,17.

Understanding the magnitude and extent of greenwashing strategies used by the tobacco industry is helpful given the emergence of these alternative tactics and the association between greenwashing advertising and consumer inaccurate risk perceptions¹¹. As these emergent tactics have the potential to mislead consumers, capturing their prevalence in extant tobacco advertising can lead to better systematic evaluation and regulation of their use. The current study describes the presence of greenwashed text and imagery within cigarette ads from 2019 through 2023.

METHODS

RESULTS

Of all 2102 cigarette ads reviewed, 23.2% contained at least one greenwashing feature, resulting in a final sample of 487 ads. The remaining 1615 ads did not have any greenwashing features and were excluded for our final sample. Table 1 presents the brand and channel characteristics. Of the 12 brands in our sample, over 90% of ads came from 4 brands: Hestia (n=205; 42.1% of the sample), Natural American Spirit (n=112; 23.0%), Winston (n=100; 20.5%) and Marlboro (n=41; 8.4%). Social media were predominant for ad identification (n=240; 49.3% of the sample), followed by consumer magazines (n=101; 20.7%) and opt-in emails (n=99; 20.3%).

For keywords/phrases, ‘naked’ (31.4%), ‘wild’ (26.9%), the phrase ‘tobacco and water’ (18.7%), ‘simple’ (14.8%), and ‘different’ (11.9%) were the most common overall (Supplementary file Table 2). Descriptors like ‘naked’ and ‘wild’ emerged only in 2022, whereas ‘tobacco and water’, ‘simple’, and ‘different’ were more common in the years 2019–2021.

The most prevalent textual references were farming/growing practices (15.6%), environmental protections via consumer actions (10.7%), and environmental events (8.2%). References to farming/growing practices were most common in 2023 (occurring in 25.2% of ads), while references to environmental protection via the consumer were more common in 2019 (19.8%), 2020 (19.7%) and 2021 (17.7%). References to environmental events were most common in 2021 (35.3%).

Imagery of flora (47.8%), great outdoors settings (27.7%), and farming or gardening (18.3%), were most common overall. Flora imagery occurred most commonly in 2022 (appearing in 77.6% of ads), while great outdoors imagery occurred most commonly in 2019 (58.4%), and farming imagery occurred most commonly in 2021 (55.9%).

Promotions related to greenwashing were less common among this sample, with 5.1% of ads containing eco-related sweepstakes, 3.9% containing eco-related giveaways and 1.6% featuring paperless coupons. Ads featuring eco-related sweepstakes were found in all years except 2020, while no instances of eco-related giveaways or paperless coupons were found after 2020.

Brands varied in their use of greenwashing tactics (Supplementary file Table 3). Hestia ads predominantly featured the descriptors ‘naked’ (74.6%) and ‘wild’ (63.9%), and less commonly used the term ‘natural’ (15.6%). Just over 15% of Hestia ads featured textual references to farming or growing practices, while 67.3% featured flora imagery. Natural American Spirit ads used descriptors such as ‘different’ (50.9%), ‘simple’ (41.1%), ‘real’ (33.9%), ‘organic’ (33.0%), ‘earth-friendly’ (23.2%), ‘tobacco and water’ (22.3%), and ‘recyclable’ (22.3%). These ads also used a variety of textual references, including messaging about environmental protections that could be taken by the consumer (38.4%), environmental events (34.8%), and farming or growing practices (32.1%). Over half (58.9%) of Natural American Spirit ads featured flora imagery, while 38.4% featured farming or gardening imagery and 31.3% featured imagery of the great outdoors. Around 17% of Natural American Spirit ads featured eco-related giveaways. Among Winston ads, 45.0% used the term ‘tobacco and water’, while 19.0% used the term ‘plant-based’. Broader textual references were used more sparingly. Winston ads had 47.0% depicting the great outdoors and 26.0% featuring farming or gardening imagery. Marlboro ads relied most heavily on great outdoors imagery (92.7%), eco-related sweepstakes (41.5%), and textual references to environmental protections via the consumer (19.5%) or via charitable activity (12.2%).

DISCUSSION

Findings from this study indicate that greenwashing is a common tactic in cigarette advertising. Although certain companies have been restricted from using the terms ‘natural’ and ‘additive-free’¹⁵, cigarette brands are leveraging a diverse range of tactics that could make their products seem eco-friendly, natural, and potentially less harmful. Commonly used tactics included specific phrases such as ‘naked’, ‘wild’, and ‘tobacco and water’; imagery of flora and the great outdoors; and general references to eco-friendly actions such as farming and growing practices. These findings are consistent with prior work documenting the wide range of tactics tobacco companies use to greenwash their products, including the use of flora and depictions of the outdoors, as well as language extending beyond ‘natural’ and ‘additive-free’^6,7,16,17,20.

Despite differences in the overall marketing and sale strategies, the use of greenwashing appeared concentrated among four brands: Hestia, Natural American Spirit, Winston, and Marlboro. That said, our study identified 12 brands that featured at least one greenwashing tactic in at least one ad. Natural American Spirit’s marketing has received considerable attention and multiple studies have linked its use of greenwashing tactics to inaccurate reduced product risk perceptions^11,13,14. While research has previously documented Winston’s and Marlboro’s use of greenwashing^5,23, this study identified a newer cigarette brand, Hestia, that prominently used greenwashing. Greenwashing tactics appeared in a considerable portion of this brand’s advertising. The introduction of this brand appears to partly explain temporal shifts in the language most commonly found in the sample of ads (e.g. emergence of descriptors ‘naked’ and ‘wild’ in 2022 to reference natural tobacco²⁴). The use of greenwashing tactics among these brands is concerning given the reach and potential appeal of these brands among young people. Marlboro remains the most popular brand of cigarettes among US youth and adults²⁵, and preference for Natural American Spirit cigarettes has also increased over time, particularly for younger adults²⁶. Currently, Hestia is not a widely available brand of cigarettes, but given their potential to appeal to young people²⁷ and the impact of greenwashing on consumer reduced harm perceptions and potential appeal to youth and young adults²⁸, it is worth continuing to monitor this brand.

In the US, tobacco companies are not allowed to advertise their products as presenting reduced risk or exposure without obtaining a modified risk order from the FDA². None of the products in this study has been granted a modified risk order. Despite this, research has found that use of many of the greenwashing tactics identified in this study are associated with inaccurate reduced risk perceptions^11,13,14. For instance, a recent randomized controlled experiment found that the use of two widely used greenwashing tactics (flora imagery and claims about eco-friendly farming practices), led to inaccurate perceptions of lower product harm, addictiveness, and nicotine content among people who viewed the ads¹¹.

Collectively, our findings and those of earlier studies underscore the need for regulatory measures that address greenwashing tactics in cigarette advertising. Prior work has demonstrated that the tobacco industry can quickly pivot to new, but similar, tactics when confronted with restrictions on use of a specific phrase (i.e. relying on the term ‘tobacco and water’ after ‘additive-free’ was restricted)⁵. Thus, a way to address the use of greenwashing tactics in cigarette ads may be to adopt a more comprehensive approach, rather than to simply restrict the use of specific terms. For example, such regulations could include plain packaging requirements or content-neutral approaches such as geographically- or audience-based restrictions on where tobacco advertising can be advertised.

CONCLUSIONS

This study identified a comprehensive inventory of greenwashing tactics currently used by cigarette companies. Greenwashing continues to be used in cigarette advertising, including use of tactics associated with inaccurate modified risk perceptions. If further studies strengthen the evidence, regulations to limit greenwashing in tobacco advertising may be justified.