By Ruth Njengere Lehmann, Kris Schürch and Luciano Ruggia
Over the past decade, major tobacco companies, most prominently Philip Morris International (PMI), have repositioned themselves as technology-driven actors committed to a “smoke-free future.” Central to this transformation is the promotion of heated tobacco products such as IQOS and ILUMA, framed within a broader narrative that alternative nicotine delivery systems reduce long-term health risks – a claim that remains contested and insufficiently substantiated.
What is less examined, however, is how these narratives are produced, amplified, and embedded within today’s digital information environment.
In March 2026, Philip Morris International (PMI) announced the debut of its “Technovation” platform in the United States’ capital, Washington, D.C (figure 1). Dubbed PMI’s global science and innovation platform, the event was held as PMI announced that it has invested more than $20 billion in U.S.-related acquisitions, manufacturing and workforce expansion since 2022. This highlights the importance of the American market to its smoke-free strategy. The Technovation forums are advertised as bringing together scientists, policymakers, media and business leaders to discuss innovation, regulation and the company’s vision for a “smoke-free future.” In the USA, the forum was also used as a platform to showcase PMI’s expanding investments in smoke-free nicotine products, including ZYN and IQOS, alongside its broader public affairs and scientific messaging strategy.
Figure 1: A session from PMI’s “Technovation: Smoke-Free by PMI” event in Washington, D.C. (Source: PMI Technovation event webpage, accessed May 2026)
Less than two months later, on 19–20 May 2026, Technovation took place in Stockholm, Sweden (figure 2), highlighting the country’s success in achieving the lowest smoking rate in the European Union. Sweden’s smoking rate of 5.4% which is just above the 5% threshold that the World Health Organization considers “smoke-free.” According to background information provided by Philip Morris International (PMI), this can be attributed to the country’s adoption of “harm-reduction” approaches – approaches promoted by PMI in pushing for the adoption of its smoke-free nicotine products.
Figure 2: A speaker presents at PMI’s Technovation event in Stockholm, Sweden (May 2026), highlighting how innovations often face initial skepticism before gaining public acceptance. (Source: Azerbaijan News, accessed May 2026)
From harm reduction to narrative dominance
One of the tobacco industry’s self-preservation tactics has always been communication manipulation. Producing and disseminating misleading research and information has been identified as one of its manipulation tactics. Increasingly, the industry is deploying large-scale, coordinated strategies that extend beyond traditional media buying, which often has limited reach and influence on public attitudes and behaviour.
As internet users increasingly rely on search engines for information, visibility in top search results has become strategically valuable. PMI explicitly acknowledges the use of search engine optimization (SEO). In their 2024 integrated report, PMI states that “SEO ensures that we provide legal-age nicotine users accurate and useful information…”
Producing seemingly “independent” media content, or content that is not formally published or directly paid for by PMI itself, represents a highly effective strategy for multiplying online materials to promote PMI’s “harm reduction” narrative. Researchers have identified this tactic as part of the tobacco industry’s broader long-term influence strategy. Once published across multiple online media outlets, such content can then be indexed, amplified and legitimized through search engines, contributing to the broader visibility and normalization of PMI’s messaging in the digital information ecosystem.
This dynamic may take on an even greater significance with the rapid development of artificial intelligence (AI) systems. AI-based information tools increasingly complement or replace traditional search engines by automatically identifying, aggregating, and summarizing content available online. As these systems often rely on the volume, visibility and clear credibility of digital sources, the large-scale dissemination of favorable media coverage may indirectly contribute to shaping how AI platforms present and prioritize information related to nicotine products, tobacco harm reduction and PMI itself.
The “Technovation” events
The earliest branded corporate communication and influence platform or events by PMI under the label “Technovation” appear online from 2022 onwards – but may have started earlier. By combining the terms “technology” and “innovation”, and creating an ill-defined but fancy neologism, PMI attempts to position itself as a technology-driven and innovative enterprise rather than a traditional cigarette manufacturer. This is strategic framing as the concept of “innovation” generally carries highly positive associations linked to progress, modernity and scientific advancement, and may contribute to reshaping public perceptions of both the company and its nicotine products.
According to PMI, its 2023 Technovation event was the “seventh edition”; if so, the Technovation series likely began around 2017, assuming annual or near-annual events. From 2024 onwards, PMI appears to have increasingly organized these events in strategic international locations. The events are typically held in high-end venues and mainly associated with expanding markets for newer nicotine products. Early on, the Technovation events were held exclusively in Neuchâtel, Switzerland at “The Cube”, PMI’s flagship research and development center (figure 3). According to PMI and related event materials, Technovation events have also been held in Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates (2024); Cape Town, South Africa (2025); Jakarta, Indonesia (2025); Astana, Kazakhstan (2025); and Dubai, United Arab Emirates (2025). This year alone, PMI has held events in Washington, D.C., United States, in April 2026, in Stockholm, Sweden, in May 2026 and recently in Rabat, Morocco, in June 2026. Speakers generally include senior PMI employees, consultants, and invited experts, aligned with PMI’s harm-reduction narrative. Collectively, these events suggest a strategic adaptation of PMI’s messaging to local contexts, emphasizing investment and employment in the United States, smoke-free ambitions in Sweden, and health policy sovereignty in Morocco.
Figure 3: Journalists from the Philippines, during an earlier PMI Technovation event at the Cube, PMI’s flagship Research and Development Centre in Neuchatel, Switzerland – 19 October 2024 (Source:
In the last Technovation event held in Washington D.C, some prominent American politicians were also present, raising fundamental questions about conflict of interest and political influence (figure 4). The United States signed the WHO Framework Convention on Tobacco Control on 10 May 2004, but it has never ratified the treaty. As a result, the country is not legally bound by its substantive obligations, including Article 5.3, which among other objectives aims to limit the interaction of government officials with the tobacco industry.
Figure 4: Agenda for PMI’s “Technovation: Smoke-Free by PMI” event in Washington, D.C., highlighting discussions on innovation, harm reduction, and PMI’s smoke-free vision. (Source: PMI Technovation event webpage, accessed May 2026)
A rare independent journalistic account of Stockholm’s Technovation event illustrates how PMI combines carefully selected venues with invited audiences of journalists – in this case 130 journalists across Europe, policymakers, academics, regulatory experts, and other stakeholders. The event leveraged the “Swedish model” to promote PMI’s nicotine pouches and broader smoke-free narrative, despite the WHO’s recent warning about the global growth of nicotine pouches. Across locations, Technovation events reproduce a consistent programmatic structure and staging, suggesting a highly coordinated global communications and marketing campaign.
Ahead of the events, invited journalists receive comprehensive press kits which contain presentations, talking points, visuals and background materials. Technovation events therefore appear to operate not only as corporate communication forums, but also as highly structured content-generation hubs designed to ease the rapid dissemination of PMI narratives across international media channels. Analyses of subsequent media coverage suggest that some published articles reproduce company messaging with little, if any, critical distance or independent examination (figure 5).
Figure 5: Past media coverage of PMI’s Technovation events and smoke-free initiatives in Africa and beyond. Source: Various screenshots from Daily News, African Business, Business Insider Africa, Destination, and allAfrica online magazines
Investigating the events following the Abu Dhabi Technovation of December 2024, we carried out a comparative assessment of eight news articles published following the event. We noticed an exceptionally elevated level of convergence in both language and narrative structure across the sampled media coverage. We estimate that approximately 80–95% of the core framing and argumentative architecture is shared, while 70–90% of the key vocabulary and messaging elements recur in highly similar or nearly identical forms. The result is not simply communication but replication at scale.
Repeated expressions include “smoke-free future”, “science-based alternatives”, “innovation”, “technology”, “consumer choice”, “informed decisions”, “misinformation”, and “better alternatives for adult smokers”. The articles also consistently reproduce the same narrative sequence: smoking is framed as a persistent global problem; innovation and technology are presented as the solution; PMI’s smoke-free products are described as scientifically substantiated alternatives; and regulatory or public-health criticism is implicitly associated with misinformation or resistance to progress. Similar numerical references, talking points and rhetorical framing recur across geographically distant media outlets, strongly suggesting the dissemination of centrally coordinated communication materials and highly standardized messaging.
Information flooding and the illusion of consensus
This strategy aligns with what scholars describe as information disorder: not necessarily the spread of falsehoods, but the manipulation of information environments through volume, repetition, and strategic visibility. In digital ecosystems governed by search engines and recommender systems, repetition matters. Content that is widely reproduced across multiple sources is more likely to be ranked highly, perceived as credible, and encountered by users. Over time, this creates an illusion of consensus, where industry-aligned narratives appear neutral, ubiquitous, and uncontested. Importantly, this dynamic advantages actors with the resources to produce and distribute content at scale, placing public health voices at a structural disadvantage.
The AI dimension: shaping future knowledge
The implications extend further in the era of artificial intelligence. Large language models and other AI systems are trained on vast corpora of publicly available text. This raises a critical concern: if industry-generated narratives dominate the digital landscape today, they may also shape the knowledge systems of tomorrow can thus be understood not only as a communication strategy, but as an AI-aware approach to pre-structuring future information environments.
Why this matters for public health
This shift represents an evolution in tobacco industry influence. Rather than directly contesting evidence, strategies now focus on shaping the conditions under which evidence is encountered, interpreted, and reproduced. This has several implications. Firstly, it risks distorting public understanding of harm reduction. It undermines media pluralism and editorial independence. Finally, it complicates regulatory approaches that focus primarily on direct industry interference. Existing frameworks, including the WHO Framework Convention on Tobacco Control, were not designed to address these diffuse, technologically mediated forms of influence.
What can be done?
Addressing this challenge requires moving beyond traditional responses.
First, there is a need to recognize information contexts themselves as a site of public health intervention. Monitoring narrative dominance, media replication, and algorithmic visibility should become part of tobacco control strategies. Studies have shown that the tobacco industry is able to influence policy leading to a delay in enacting tobacco control reform. Similarly, there is a need to invest in understanding how narrative dominance contributes to skewing policies that protect public health and undermine tobacco control efforts.
Second, collaboration across civil society, public health institutions, and research organisations is essential. No single actor can match the scale of coordinated industry communication, but collective amplification of independent, evidence-based messaging, supported by independent and analytical media approaches, can help rebalance visibility.
In addition, greater scrutiny is needed from journal editors, researchers, and digital platforms on the provenance, replication, and independence of widely circulated content. As influencer marketing and the dominance of digital platforms increasingly shape how information is produced, amplified, and consumed, the boundaries between advertising, sponsored messaging, and independent journalism have become progressively blurred. This underscores the urgent need for clearer standards of transparency and accountability, particularly in distinguishing paid or promotional content from critical, evidence-based, and editorially independent media. Strengthening these safeguards is essential to preserving public trust, supporting informed decision-making, and protecting the integrity of scientific and public discourse, in the interest of public health and safeguarding public-interest policies.
PMI’s Technovation events illustrate how corporate actors leverage digital systems to engineer visibility and shape public discourse. By coordinating content production, media dissemination, and narrative repetition, such strategies create information environments where industry perspectives become disproportionately prominent.
In the age of algorithms and AI, the question is no longer only what is communicated, but what becomes visible—and why.
Authors:
Ruth Njengere Lehmann, Advocacy and Knowledge Management Collaborator – Swiss Association for Tobacco Control
Kris Schürch, Project Manager – Swiss Association for Tobacco Control, PhD at the Institute of Social and Preventive Medicine, University of Bern, Bern, Switzerland
Luciano Ruggia, Managing Director – Swiss Association for Tobacco Control