Lamborghini brand sharing and cigarette advertising

LAMBORGHINI BRAND SHARING AND CIGARETTE ADVERTISING Licensing and brand sharing arrangements, where a fee or royalty is paid for use of a name, is a common strategic consideration to provide a newly introduced product or service with an immediate and proven brand identity (table 1).1 Serving as such an example, Korean Tomorrow and Global (KT&G), which is South Korea’s leading tobacco firm, launched a new cigarette brand, Tonino Lamborghini, on 18 April 2012, where the branding resembles the legendary Italian luxury sports car maker (figure 1A,B).2 3 According to The Moodie Report, it took 1 year of negotiation to reach a brand licensing agreement and 3 years to develop the cigarette product.4 The cigarette brand was initially offered in two variants, L8 (predominantly black package) and L6 (predominantly yellow package), with reported tar deliveries of 8.0 mg and 6.0 mg, respectively. Compared with KT&G’s other product offerings, Tonino Lamborghini cigarettes have considerably higher reported tar deliveries and such product characteristics contribute to the brand’s masculine, powerful and assertive image.4–8 Tonino Lamborghini now offers additional brand variants, including ‘Ice Volt’ (figure 2), which is mentholated and has promotional claims that the product possesses ‘the thrilling taste of powerful cooling freshness,’ and ‘Ice Tornado,’ which is described as having a strong, fresh and cool flavour and possesses a ‘tornado’ filter that rapidly rotates cigarette smoke (figure 3).9 The brand name, Tonino Lamborghini refers to the son of Ferruccio Lamborghini, who is the founder of the legendary car manufacturer. Tonino Lamborghini’s signature is depicted on the packaging, which is highly expressive of an identity and meant to give the product authenticity.10 Tonino Lamborghini is also known as an Italian merchandising brand that offers fashion items as well as tobacco paraphernalia such as high-end lighters, cases, cigar cutters and ashtrays.11 Like its automobile counterpart, a raging bull logo is used to represent Tonino Lamborghini cigarettes (figure 4). A bull represents a powerful, impressive, striking and daunting beast that also symbolises strength, masculinity, virility and regality.12 13 Choi Jihyun, KT&G Overseas Brand Department Manager, explains that the tobacco company is attempting to leverage the masculine global appeal of the Lamborghini brand name, which is most likely to attract or draw Korea’s younger generation male smokers who are particularly interested in western culture and imported luxury brands and cars. Tonino Lamborghini is marketed to ‘have a premium and masculine brand image, targeting 1Department of Marketing and Consumer Studies, University of Guelph, Guelph, Ontario, Canada 2Dan Program in Management and Organizational Studies, University of Western Ontario, London, Ontario, Canada