New report on India’s bidi industry marketing via social media
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New report on India’s bidi industry marketing via social media, Tobacco Tactics, updated 12 November 2021, accessed 07 May 2024.
Vital Strategies have launched a new report titled, Selling Death on Social Media: How Bidis Are Reaching Consumers Online, revealing that India’s bidi industry is exploiting rapid growth in the use of social media, particularly Facebook, to market and facilitate sales of bidi products to consumers.
Key findings include:
- Bidi marketing takes place almost exclusively on Facebook (98%), with linkages to Instagram and WhatsApp.
- 344 instances of bidi marketing on social media took place between December 2020 – August 2021.
- Facebook hosts at least 30 distinct pages for bidi companies. Many of these companies appear to be utilizing Facebook pages to facilitate sales, via WhatsApp.
The report analyses data collected from TERM, a digital media monitoring tool that tracks online tobacco marketing across online news, social media posts and conversations.
Read the full report here.
