“Hey Morris,” Phil said to his friend one day. “I’m going to find out how much you know about smoking in the US.”
“Sure, boss,” Morris said. “But why?”
“To help set up our marketing campaign, of course.”
“Okay. Lessgo.”
“You have to answer every question within 10 percent of the correct answer. Otherwise you’re wrong. First question: Let’s start with non-Hispanic whites. Men versus women. Out of 100 white men, how many smoke?”
“Probably 25.”
“Wrong. It’s 24 out of 100.”
“Hey! You said if I was within 10 percent…”
“I did, didn’t I? Well, okay. How many women?”
“Same number, 24 of 100.”
“This time you’re really wrong. The answer is 20 out of 100.”
“Wow,” Morris said. “That’s a lot of women who aren’t buying our product.”
“Hold on. It gets worse. What about black women? Out of 100, how many smoke?”
“I’d better say 19.”
“No, Morris. You’d better say 17.3 percent.”
“What? Where are you getting those numbers?”
“From the American Heart Association. They keep track of such things, you know. Out of 100 black men, how many do you think smoke?”
“I’d guess 20.”
“Wrong. It’s 26.”
“Wow. I hope you’re going to write these numbers down…”
“I will. How many Hispanic men out of 100 smoke?”
“I’m tired of being wrong. You tell me.”
“Okay. It’s 21.1 out of 100.”
“C’mon, Phil,” Morris said. “You can’t have 0.1 smokers.”
“It’s a percent, dummy. Would you rather have me say 21.1 percent?”
“Yes, now that you asked. I really would.”
“OK. What percent of Hispanic women smoke?”
“Probably about 20 percent.”
“Wrong by a mile. It’s only 11.1 percent.”
“Wow. We have a lot of work to do there, don’t we?”
“Wait. It gets worse. What percent of Asian men smoke?”
“Tell me.”
“Okay, it’s 20.6 percent. But here’s the surprise. Only 6 percent of Asian women in America smoke cigarettes.”
“Wow.”
“Now for our last group, let’s look at native Americans, including those in Alaska. What do you think? C’mon. It’s your last chance to be wrong, Morris.”
“Okay. I’d guess 25 percent of native American men and 22 percent of women in that category.”
“You would, and you would be wrong-er than ever.”
“Wrong-er? That isn’t even a word, Phil. Don’t make up a new language to describe my guessing ability.”
“Well, these are the people we have eating out of our hand.”
“Or smoking out of our cigarettes.”
“That would work. A whopping 37.5 percent of native American men smoke, and 26.8 percent of native American women.”
“I’m worn out. I hope you don’t have any more statistics to throw at me.”
“Oh, but I do. Morris, tell me if you think people with less education smoke more than those with a college degree?”
“I’m afraid so, Phil.”
“You’d be right. People with more than 16 years of education smoke at a rate of 7 percent. And those who smoke the most are in what we call the poverty level.”
“I’ve got it! I’ve got it!”
“You’ve got what?”
“Our marketing strategy. Don’t you agree that it’s easier to get a group of people with lots of smokers to add more smokers than it is to go to a group that has hardly any smokers and try to win a few over?”
“I guess so. Sounds reasonable.”
“Then we should sell our cigarettes to American native men who have a GED but nothing beyond.”
“C’mon, Morris. You didn’t give me that statistic.”
“Ooops. You’re right. I didn’t. Okay, here it is. People who only have a GED smoke at a rate of 43.2 percent.”
“Then it should be easy to find all of the men in that category who are native Americans and are at the poverty level. Boosting their smoking rate from 25 percent to 50 percent or better shouldn’t be that hard to do.”
“Maybe. But my vote would be to go for everybody who’s at poverty level. And everybody who doesn’t have much of an education.”
“What about women?”
“Ugh. They’re a lost cause. All we can do is run a campaign telling all women how great a good smoke is. We’ll need to work on that. Spend a few million promoting our free-base nicotine and nail ‘em with one smoke.”
“We might not get ‘em all, but we’d get ‘em fast.”
(Go to the AHA site for the statistics.)
