Office of Health Communication and Education, Center for Tobacco Products, Silver Spring, Maryland, USA
Office of Science, Center for Tobacco Products, Silver Spring, Maryland, USA.
Tob Control. 2021 Nov;30(e1):e33-e36. doi: 10.1136/tobaccocontrol-2020-055994. Epub 2020 Oct 12.
Influencers market products for tobacco companies on social media. This is the first study to systematically examine leading cigar brands' use of influencers on their brand Instagram pages.
We identified 24 leading cigar brands, using July 2017-June 2018 US retail data. We identified cigar brands that had official appearing Instagram pages, with at least one influencer in the past 20 posts. We coded characteristics of the past three posts from each of five brand pages that contained influencers, such as setting and what the influencer was doing. Finally, we described influencer characteristics.
Approximately one-third of the 24 brands had official Instagram accounts with at least one influencer in the past 20 posts. We identified 28 influencers, typically people of colour from the hip-hop music industry, some with millions of followers. Influencers included Bella Thorne (@bellathorne), Shaquille O'Neal (@shaq) and T.I. (@troubleman31). Brands' posts that contained influencers showed the influencer using/holding a product, wearing branded merchandise or appearing in photos with a brand watermark. Three brands' pages posted sponsored event photos (ie, concerts and events using branded backgrounds).
Cigar brands commonly use influencers to market their products on brand Instagram pages. Results are consistent with previous findings that cigar companies' marketing may target younger African Americans and highlight the potential utility of education campaigns that similarly engage influencers.
影响者在社交媒体上为烟草公司推销产品。这是第一项系统研究雪茄品牌在其品牌 Instagram 页面上使用影响者的研究。
我们使用 2017 年 7 月至 2018 年 6 月的美国零售数据，确定了 24 个主要雪茄品牌。我们确定了具有官方外观的雪茄品牌，这些品牌在过去 20 条帖子中至少有一位影响者。我们对来自五个有影响者的品牌页面中的过去三个帖子的特征进行了编码，例如设置和影响者在做什么。最后，我们描述了影响者的特征。
大约三分之一的 24 个品牌拥有官方 Instagram 账户，在过去 20 条帖子中至少有一位影响者。我们确定了 28 位影响者，他们通常是来自嘻哈音乐界的有色人种，其中一些人拥有数百万的粉丝。影响者包括贝拉·索恩（@bellathorne）、沙奎尔·奥尼尔（@shaq）和 T.I.（@troubleman31）。包含影响者的品牌帖子显示影响者正在使用/持有产品、穿着品牌商品或在带有品牌水印的照片中出现。三个品牌的页面发布了赞助活动照片（即使用品牌背景的音乐会和活动）。
雪茄品牌通常在品牌 Instagram 页面上使用影响者来推销其产品。结果与之前的发现一致，即雪茄公司的营销可能针对年轻的非裔美国人，并突出了类似吸引影响者的教育活动的潜在效用。
