Some students see sly pitch to teens in Salem cigarette ad

By Ben Aguirre Jr
Seattle Times Eastside bureau

	TOM REESE / THE SEATTLE TIMES Sammamish High School students, including Nick Giersdorf, shown between TV monitors above, say a Salem cigarette ad, right, has a similarity to one for Microsoft's Xbox.
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On the back of the April 7 issue of Sports Illustrated magazine is an advertisement showing a woman with her head tilted back and cigarette smoke seeping from between her lips.

The smoke forms an "s." Its curves lead the eye toward the top of the page, where a green light peeks out from behind a black sphere.

According to Jerry De Pinto, a career and technical-education teacher in the Bellevue School District, there's an "x" hidden in the light that is similar to the logo of Microsoft's Xbox video-game console. He says the shapes and colors used in the smoking advertisement are almost identical to those of Xbox, a product that appeals largely to an underage crowd.

"When did Salem change their logo to look like Xbox?" De Pinto said.

De Pinto and some of his Sammamish High School students created a 4-1/2-minute documentary that argues R.J. Reynolds Tobacco is targeting teens with the ad. This week, the group sent copies of the video to state Attorney General Christine Gregoire, the U.S. Justice Department and the American Lung Association asking them to weigh in.

David Howard, a spokesman for R.J. Reynolds, denied the company targets teens, while Carlos De Leon, a spokesman for Microsoft's Xbox, said he had never heard that claim and couldn't comment because he hadn't seen the video.

De Pinto said he stumbled upon the ad and showed it to some of his students while covering up the surgeon general's warning, and they thought it was an ad for an Xbox game. Their response intrigued him, so he assigned the documentary to three students.

"I was blown away," said Nick Giersdorf, an 18-year-old student in De Pinto's production class. Giersdorf and two other students, Tom Lowe and Thomas Yount, finished the documentary several weeks ago. Their question: Is R.J. Reynolds, the parent company of Salem cigarettes, trying to market its product to a younger audience by deliberately choosing colors and shapes similar to those used for the video-game console?

Howard said the colors used in the advertisements for the Salem brand coincide with a campaign called "stir the senses," which started in April. He said there are two types of Salem cigarettes, green label and black label. Howard said Salem's logo, a black and green circle, was created in 1997, before Xbox was produced. Xbox also uses black and green in its games and ads, with some items featuring a circular logo using the same colors.

In June 2002, a California judge ruled that the tobacco company had violated the terms of the 1998 national tobacco settlement by placing cigarette advertisements in magazines that had a heavy teenage readership. The judge fined the company $20 million. The company appealed and lost.

Financial gain, however, isn't what De Pinto and his students are seeking. "Showing people the truth is all that matters," Giersdorf said.

Sammamish High School isn't the only place where teens are creating anti-smoking documentaries. Yesterday, Seattle Mayor Greg Nickels recognized seven teens who created their own video. The teens, members of Neighborhood House's Resistors Against Peer Pressure program, made "Breathless: Real talk from real teens about tobacco."

The nine-minute film discusses tobacco from a teen's point of view, with interviews from underage smokers, and juxtaposes anti-smoking advertisements with teens who smoke, said Charles Redell, a communications specialist for Neighborhood House.

Ben Aguirre Jr.: 206-464-3299 or baguirre@seattletimes.com