Marlboro Swiss IndoorsMarlboro Swiss Indoors
What would you think if you saw a poster advertisement associating world tennis champion Roger Federer with the Marlboro cigarette brand? Perhaps you wouldn't believe it and think it's a fake (and you would be right in the case of the example shown on the left). The time when sport stars where used to promote cigarettes is long gone. We have to go back to the 80's or early 90's at latest to find the very few examples of famous tennis players who got compromised with the tobacco industry. The most striking case that comes to mind is the long collaboration between Billie Jean King and Philip Morris, which started in 1970 when the company formed the Virginia Slims Tennis Tour and that culminated with her election to the Board of Directors of Philip Morris in 1999.
If you go over the picture on the left with the mouse, you'll see the real poster ad. It associates Roger Federer with the Davidoff tobacco brand. Davidoff is to Imperial Tobacco, the world'd fourth largest tobacco multinational, what Marlboro is to Philip Morris - the company's strategic brand. It is therefore shocking to see that, today, the image of a prestigious tennis player such as Roger Federer can be used to seduce young people and promote a deadly addictive product that kills one consumer out of two. 
It is very sad that Roger Federer's close association with Davidoff makes him follow in the footsteps of Billie Jean King. Will we one day learn that he has been elected to serve in the Board of Directors of Imperial Tobacco? We sincerely hope not. Federer is a great champion, perhaps the best tennis player of all times. We can only wish that he will pull himself together and get as quickly as possible out of this morass, in which, we suppose, he has been put without being fully aware of its moral and ethical implications.