Angeliki Balantani & Kris Schürch
Lately, tobacco multinationals reminiscent of Philip Morris Worldwide (PMI) have quickly expanded the worldwide marketplace for heated tobacco merchandise (HTPs) and have intensified its promotion by means of paid media content material that imitates impartial journalism. We doc the systematic use of this technique in Switzerland, the place HTP use has risen sharply and better taxation is beneath political debate. This follow blurs the road between promoting and reporting, and permits public notion to be formed whereas trying to keep away from the looks of overt advertising.
In 2025, common Swiss media shops, together with Le Temps, Neue Zürcher Zeitung (NZZ), Blue Information, and Blick printed sponsored articles financed by PMI. Whereas labelled as paid content material, or “in cooperation with PMI” firstly of the article, these items adopted the format, headlines and tone of editorial journalism, making them troublesome for readers to differentiate from real reporting. Titles illustrate the framing: Blue Information ran “7 examples of how Philip Morris is driving change”, see Determine 1, whereas an NZZ article promoted HTPs and nicotine pouches as “much less dangerous options to traditional cigarettes…What Switzerland can study”. Such placements appeared alongside different real information, lending PMI’s narratives credibility.
Determine 1: Screenshot of Blue Information article, “7 examples of how Philip Morris is driving change”, with the “In cooperation with Philip Morris Worldwide” underlined.
Two themes dominate PMI’s paid content material. First, articles emphasise the corporate’s societal and financial significance in Switzerland. PMI highlights its Neuchâtel-based R&D centre “the Dice”, with greater than 1,000 employees and investments of “a whole bunch of hundreds of thousands of USD”. Articles current PMI as a driver of innovation, sustainability and a associate in public well being. Second, HTPs are framed as scientific achievements. PMI claims “round 875 impartial publications” affirm their findings, and asserts poisonous emissions are diminished by 90-95% in contrast with cigarettes in a paid content material article titled “The 5 keys to hurt discount”. Worldwide examples are cited to bolster the message: Sweden’s expertise with snus and Japan’s uptake of HTPs are introduced as fashions for a step in direction of a “smoke-free future” for Switzerland. Within the Le Temps paid content material article titled “Lowering the dangers of tobacco?”, Serge Maeder, World Head of Diminished-Danger Merchandise Innovation at PMI is quoted saying “even when the well being dangers can’t be utterly eradicated, the non-combustible options are in any case higher than cigarettes.”
PMI’s paid content material constantly omits impartial peer-reviewed findings displaying much less beneficial outcomes, reminiscent of that many toxicants stay at ranges akin to cigarettes. Laboratory emissions knowledge are introduced as proof of well being safety, regardless of the absence of long-term epidemiological proof. Japan, usually cited as a “success case”, has prevalent twin use consumption, which isn’t talked about. By selectively citing company-funded analysis alongside credible public well being sources, PMI constructs an phantasm of scientific consensus. Comparable ways have been documented in Germany, the place PMI focused dental professionals with selectively referenced “hurt discount” supplies, and in the USA, the place executives positioned paid content material within the Wall Road Journal and New York Occasions.
Within the latter paid content material article, determine 2, subtly recognized as an commercial on the prime of the web page, PMI frames itself as an organization led by “science” that’s working towards a smoke-free future, emphasising its giant investments in analysis, its independent-survey knowledge and its collaboration with regulators in order to place its new smoke-free merchandise as scientifically substantiated options to cigarettes. Nevertheless, in doing so the piece constructs an phantasm of a broad scientific consensus by selectively highlighting optimistic survey findings and PMI-commissioned analysis, whereas obscuring or downplaying impartial critique of its strategies and motivations, thus presenting its company technique as if it had been unanimously endorsed by the scientific group.
Determine 2 Screenshot of paid content material article in The New York Occasions by Philip Morris Worldwide. Solely when hovering over the “?” image does one learn that “This content material was paid for and created by Philip Morris Worldwide. The information and editorial employees of The New York Occasions had no position on this commercial’s creation.”
The medium is as essential because the message. Greater than a decade in the past, the trade was already selling its merchandise on-line. But just lately, PMI’s paid content material technique is designed to imitate editorial work, decreasing the salience of “sponsored” disclaimers. Readers could miss these labels, in small or faint font, notably when articles seem amongst real reporting. This tactic buys credibility of established information shops with out the reputational danger PMI could entice from overt promoting. The technique displays the Coverage Dystopia Mannequin’s description of trade use of instrumental ways and framing to delay and weaken regulation. Comparable covert promotional practices have been documented beforehand in digital and influencer advertising, however the scale and prominence of PMI’s placements in Switzerland are marking a brand new degree of legitimacy-seeking, notably in relation to their HTPs.
PMI’s marketing campaign in Switzerland continues as an example how tobacco multinationals adapt established harm-reduction rhetoric to new communication channels. As Switzerland debates HTP taxation, these ways danger shaping public opinion and weakening regulatory momentum. Recognising and denormalising these actions is important. We hope that by highlighting this strategy to successfully purchase information media area, different tobacco management and public well being organisations could start to critically view and consider information articles driving trade narratives of their nations. This additionally contains motivating media shops themselves to reassess their associations with the tobacco trade. Renewing storytelling round tobacco consumption and the tobacco trade can assist reshape social notion.
As acknowledged by Matthes et al. (2025), we have to empower well being professionals’ to critically assess trade communication. You will need to recognise that Large Tobacco’s so-called ‘pseudo-transformation’ is just not a real public well being effort however relatively a profit-oriented enterprise strategy. France and Australia already prohibit such tobacco sponsorships in information shops. The place paid content material articles are permitted, disclaimers should be outstanding, as advisable by the Swiss Press Council and the U.S. Federal Commerce Fee. Furthermore, editorial and industrial roles should stay separate, and covert promotions prohibited, as proven by UK Promoting Requirements Authority rulings on undisclosed e-cigarette advertisements. These measures align with the WHO FCTC and EU legislation, displaying that disclosure, independence, coaching, and transparency are each needed and possible to make sure that the tobacco trade is just not given a platform.
Authors:
Dr. Angeliki Balantani and Kris Schürch are employed by the Swiss Affiliation for Tobaccco Management. Kris Schürch can also be affiliated to the Institute for Social and Preventive Medication, and the Graduate College for Well being Sciences on the College of Bern in Switzerland.
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