Skip to main contentBill Penny didn't intend to take on Joe Camel and the Marlboro Man. In fact, the Eugene native, who smoked briefly as an adolescent, longed to rise to the top of a sport whose tobacco addiction was clearly evident at last weekend's CART races at the Portland International Raceway.
Penny says he's been interested in cars since he could talk. He showed promise as a student in racing school, but could never nail down corporate sponsorship. He came up with several schemes in the early '90s to get himself behind the wheel; all of them failed. Then, after his mother, a longtime smoker, died from lung cancer in 1994, Penny hatched a new idea: Get the American Cancer Society and anti-smoking forces to sponsor a driver (him) to race alongside the tobacco-plastered cars. It would generate lots of publicity for a good cause and, more important, allow Penny to race.
Penny formed Racing for Tobacco-Free Kids. Unfortunately for him, although his idea seems logical, anti-smoking forces have shunned him.
So as Penny, who lives in Beaverton, has used a six-figure inheritance to pursue this dream. In recent years, he's focused less on the prospect of racing and more on what has proven to be the equally fruitless challenge of raising awareness of tobacco's influence in motor sports. He spoke with WW prior to the CART races.
Willamette Week: What do racing and tobacco-free kids have to do with each other?
Bill Penny: The sponsorship of motor sports is essentially the Holy Grail of the entire worldwide marketing platform of the tobacco industry.
Why do you say that?
Well, they not only use it as a means to circumvent the rules banning them from television advertising, but every single aspect of their marketing platform uses the racing car. Branded merchandise, prize promotion, VIP entertainment, corporate giving, in-store displays, print advertising-in all of these media you'll see an image of the racing car. In the tobacco industry, the only things really important in a marketing sense are the brand names-Marlboro, Winston and such-and their brand images-the cowboy and the camel. But the racing car follows those items very closely.
What are the general regulations on tobacco advertising?
The law as it relates to the ban on television commercials is a single sentence. It simply says that the advertising of cigarettes and cigars will be banned as of Jan. 1, 1971, on all media of electronic communication subject to federal jurisdiction. Of course, the key word is "advertising" and its definition. Is it a paid-for commercial? Does it have a selling message? Is it simply the display of a logo? Is it the mention of the brand by announcers on the television?
There is a CART race coming up as part of the Rose Festival. Will we see tobacco advertising at that race?
Oh, very much so.
In what form?
In the form of the cars, transporters, the brand of clothing of the teams, the drivers, the VIP areas, the selling of branded merchandise in the paddock. Also, the racetrack will be the only place in the country where it is legal to display tobacco billboards.
So there are no tobacco billboards except for at racetracks?
The tobacco industry voluntarily gave up all billboards across the country. So if you are driving you probably won't notice any tobacco billboards, but they exist at the racetrack.
Do you have any idea what the Rose Festival organization gets for the tobacco billboards that are there?
The billboards themselves are in a public park. The Rose Festival Association as a private entity leases the park for the race and sells the billboard space to the tobacco industry. Last year the director of the Rose Festival told me that the revenue was somewhere in the $150,000 range.
Just for one race?
That's right.
Are there examples of people who have been prevented from using such advertising on television?
In 1995 there was an incident where courtside tables at Madison Square Garden had tobacco brand names on them continually in the camera's view. And the Justice Department successfully ordered Madison Square Garden to cease and desist displaying those brand names.
The naming rights for PIR are currently up for sale. Would it be legal for a tobacco company to buy those rights and call PIR, say, the "Winston Memorial Raceway"?
I believe not. They can participate in one brand-name sponsorship per year, which could be a single event, but they interpret it as an entire series of races or a team competing in a series of races. If they were then to name a racetrack, that would then be a violation of that rule and would constitute brand-name sponsorship.
When people come out to PIR to see the CART race, will there be any cars that will have no tobacco advertising on them?
In the CART series, which is not sponsored by tobacco, there will be tobacco cars and non-tobacco cars. There are eight cars on four teams sponsored by tobacco at the Portland race: two American companies, Phillip Morris with Marlboro and Brown & Williamson with Kool cigarettes, and then two foreign brands, Players and Hollywood of Brazil. The only reason I can fathom that these foreign companies sponsor a series that predominantly takes place in America is that the live television feed reaches back to those countries.
There are eight cigarette cars out of how many in the race?
I would guess about 26 cars. However, the tobacco industry will only sponsor the best, most competitive teams, so it may be that four or six of those cars will be running right at the front of the pack.
Do you have the same concerns for liquor or beer sponsorships of cars?
I don't compare tobacco to any other substance or drug. Tobacco kills more people than alcohol, drugs, accidents, AIDS and gunshot wounds combined. It's made unbelievably marketable by the best marketers in history, and it's also the most accessible drug to the youngest children. So it's unlike anything else. I think the tobacco industry should not be allowed to advertise anywhere. I would not say that of alcohol, burgers or anything else.
How long have you been after the cigarette companies for motorsports advertising?
Well, you have to understand that I'm a driver and my motivation originally was to find sponsorship. In 1995 I realized that an anti-tobacco promotion in the most tobacco-dominated media would produce controversy and exposure. Perhaps this would be attractive to youth sports marketers and to what I knew was an oncoming wave of anti-tobacco media dollars. So the original idea was to have an anti-tobacco car running together with tobacco-sponsored cars.
So you came at this from the point of view of raising revenue rather than...
That was my original motivation, yes.
Did it work?
No, it did not. It took about a year of thought to realize that the tobacco industry might be legally vulnerable to these sponsorships. That's when I began the process of investigating the issue and trying to solicit support for it.
Your quest essentially went from a desire for sponsorship dollars to becoming an anti-smoking advocate.
That's right. And the desire for the sponsorship dollars never wavered, because that was my main motivation. Without that motivation, I probably would have given up a long time ago. So by focusing on that, I've sort of been able to create a whole different purpose for what I'm doing.
Are you still driving?
No, I have not competed in a very long time. I haven't been able to find any sponsorship.
How much money have you spent on racing for tobacco-free kids?
More than $150,000, which was everything I had. You have to understand it's been a situation where the pure logic of what I was doing made me believe that sponsorship dollars were just around the corner. I've been on sort of a merry-go-round for years, throwing more and more money at this thinking it would pay off for me personally.
Where did the money come from?
When my mother passed away in 1994 from lung cancer due to smoking, I received a modest inheritance from her, mainly a small beach cabin that was entirely paid for. So I took out a mortgage on the place to do my research. It's not a full-time job, but it does take up a lot of time.
Do you have a day job?
I'm not qualified to do a lot of things. So over the past five or six years I have sort of molded myself to this. It's what I wanted to do. Professionally I have worked in Portland as a landscaper; I'm currently working for a magazine in Portland selling advertising. A couple months ago I took a job as a telemarketer. So really, as far as work goes, I do odd jobs to get by.
It sounds like what started out as a sponsorship idea has consumed your life.
Yes, it has.
Has it also consumed your social life?
To a certain extent. I had a girlfriend about four or five years ago, and ultimately we broke apart because she just couldn't deal with the uncertainty of my future. Everything that I was doing was speculative.
You've had a booth at the CART races each of the past two years. Why?
Well, I'm just trying to raise awareness for this issue-the fact that the industry uses this sport for their purposes. A lot of people would like to think that the tobacco companies are benevolently contributing to the health of the sport, when in fact if the sport were in some way irrelevant to the tobacco industry and their purposes, they would drop it immediately. They use the sport to sell their product, and it wouldn't be allowed in other sports. Imagine the Marlboro Portland Trail Blazers, or the Kool Los Angeles Lakers. No one would have it, but it occurs in auto racing because the fans are used to it.
Do you have any idea how much money the tobacco industry spends on racing?
The tobacco industry issues reports every year to the Federal Trade Commission detailing its advertising expenditures. In 1999, the total marketing budget for the tobacco industry in the U.S. was $8.25 billion, up from, I think, $6 billion the previous year. And the amount that they spend on racing cars probably only amounts to about $120 million. That's only 1 or 2 percent of their budget, so it wouldn't seem like motor sports is a big deal to them. But that total only keeps the wheels of the racing cars rolling; it doesn't include all the related advertising that features racing cars and racing images. We are talking about a billion to a billion and a half related to the motor sports sponsorships.
Have any of the cigarette companies contacted you and told you to shut up or go away?
Nope.
So you haven't heard from them or any of their representatives?
I know that they are aware of me. I know that my stuff has been passed along. But I think that they don't feel too threatened. They don't see me making a lot of progress.
Your argument-that this advertising shouldn't be permitted-makes a lot of sense, and there is obviously a large anti-smoking lobby out there. Why haven't they put you on their team?
There's got to be several reasons. The first being, if you are not a racing fan, it's not something that's really on your radar screen or something you're exposed to a lot. But you have to realize racing is the most popular spectator sport in the world. The tobacco industry realizes one billion television impressions of their products every week around the world. What I've found is that, just like the tobacco industry, the anti-tobacco industry has its own power center. They have to maintain their own status quo, and because we are seeing such [a decrease] in smoking with the astronomical increases in price, brought by the settlement, that a lot of people are able to take credit where none is due. People who work in the anti-tobacco community all have their motivations, which really rule what they do, benevolent as they might want to sound.
How do you feel having spent five or six years on this? Was it worth it?
Well no, it hasn't been worth it at all. Did you see the movie The Insider? That's my life. What that guy is going through-he's losing his house, his credit; things are falling apart for him. Unlike him, I am not being scrutinized or attacked or intimidated. In my case, something equally as damaging is happening: I'm being ignored. And rather than calling me the insider, you might refer to me as the outsider, because it seems that the public-health community and the anti-tobacco community have their own sort of gentlemen's club and they just don't want me to be a member.
Of the top 15 finishers Sunday at Portland International Raceway, four were sponsored by tobacco companies
WWeek 2015