Headshots on bidi and smokeless tobacco packs in India and Bangladesh: a curious branding element

The appeal of smoking and specific brands has long been promoted through carefully crafted, aspirational characters that are highlighted in tobacco marketing.1 2 The Marlboro Man is the archetypal fictional character that associated smoking with aspirational personal and lifestyle attributes in order to promote a specific brand; ad campaigns for brands such as Newport and Virginia Slims routinely depicted aspirational people in product promotions. There is little published research on branding of other tobacco products popular in low-income and middle-income countries.

During data collection for TPackSS (Tobacco Packaging Surveillance System3) in India and Bangladesh, we noticed faces similar to headshots or passport photos as part of the branding on bidi and smokeless tobacco (SLT) packaging in a way that we did not see on cigarettes.

Following the TPackSS protocol,4 we systematically collected 572 unique bidi (India: 2013, 2016, 2017; Bangladesh: 2013, 2016) and smokeless…

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