摘要：Philip Morris Companies, the world’s largest and most profitable tobacco seller, has changed its corporate name to The Altria Group. The company has also embarked on a plan to improve its corporate image. Examination of internal company documents reveals that these changes have been planned for over a decade and that the company expects to reap specific and substantial rewards from them. Tobacco control advocates should be alert to the threat Philip Morris’s plans pose to industryfocused tobacco control campaigns. Company documents also suggest what the vulnerabilities of those plans are and how advocates might best exploit them. PHILIP MORRIS COMPANIES, the nation’s largest and most profitable tobacco seller, announced in late 2001 that it would be changing its name to The Altria Group. 1 As the maker of Marlboro, the world’s top-selling cigarette brand, Philip Morris is a familiar name. In recent years, tobacco control campaigns have focused effectively on the industry’s role in promoting tobacco use, and this familiar name has made a recognizable target. However, under the company’s new proposal, “Philip Morris” will only refer to the tobacco operating companies under the larger “Altria Group” corporate umbrella, thus insulating both the corporation and its other operating companies—notably, Kraft General Foods—from the taint of tobacco. Holding the company as a whole responsible for its role in tobacco-related death and disease will thus become more difficult. In preparing this article, we searched the Philip Morris Incorporated Document Web site ( http://www.pmdocs.com ), which provides access to millions of corporate documents, released as a result of the settlement of the state attorneys general lawsuits. Using terms such as “image,” “corporate identity,” and “Altria,” as well as names of individuals and consulting companies in a “snowball” search strategy, 2 we found more than 400 relevant documents dating back to the late 1980s. We also examined news articles following Philip Morris’s announcement.
