Warnings on cigarette packets such as ‘Smoking can kill’ or ‘Smoking is very harmful to you and your surroundings’ were supposed to get people to stop smoking. But according to new marketing research, they have precisely the opposite effect, according to dr.dk.

Want to smoke
In fact according to research, the warnings give consumers more of a wish to smoke. A Danish marketing guru Martin Lindstrøm has tested the brains of several thousand consumers and found that the warnings are associated with pleasure – because the smoker associates the warning with something pleasant that is about to happen – smoking.

As a result, the junior coalition partner the Conservative People’s Party and the government’s parliamentary safety net the Danish People’s Party want to have the warnings removed again.

Health Minister
“First of all I will be discussing this with the minister for health who is the one who goes to the meetings in the European Union – and this is an EU issue,” says Conservative Health Spokesperson Vivi Kier.

The research method used by Lindstrøm is revolutionary in marketing in that it makes it possible to determine how to stimulate parts of the brain so that consumers want to buy a product without realising that what they see is an advertisement.