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But the tobacco-industry story generating the most buzz in newsrooms and office corridors was that the Brown & Williamson Tobacco Corp. was in love: "Yup, you heard right. Brown & Williamson Tobacco is in love. We're a giant corporation, and you make us feel like a little kitten. Thank you, lover. By the way, the other tobacco companies hate you and think you're ugly. They told us so."

This prerecorded message -- complete with ambient piano music and a cheesy announcer -- is currently being played for everyone who calls the toll-free number printed on packages of Brown & Williamson cigarettes. The number is "a way for consumers to communicate with us if they want information on the brand, if they want to find out where to buy the brand or if they want to get coupons or other promotional material," says company spokesman Mark Smith. Customers who wish to receive any of these items must send a photocopy of their driver's license as proof that they're of age.

"It's not the major thrust of [the company's] marketing. This message was designed to entertain and have fun with people who are calling the 1-800 number," Smith told me over the phone from company headquarters in Kentucky -- "home of the Kentucky Derby, fine bourbon and burly tobacco."

What Brown & Williamson hadn't expected was for news of the message, which had been playing to callers for five weeks prior to being "discovered," to snowball over the Internet. "We've received thousands and thousands of calls above and beyond what we normally get," sighed Smith, who described the influx as "totally unexpected." Brown & Williamson has been running humorous messages on their 1-800 line for almost a year now, Smith said. This was the first to catch on.

And how. In addition to good old-fashioned e-mail forwarding, newspapers from St. Petersburg to San Francisco picked up the story, complete with objections from anti-tobacco activists. "Clearly it's a desperate attempt by a desperate company that's looking for ways to continue their name," Lynn Carol Birgmann, a Kentucky-based anti-smoking activist, told the Associated Press.

Fair enough. But if companies like Brown & Williamson are desperate, it's because people like Birgmann have successfully fought for and won harsh restrictions on how tobacco companies market and advertise their product. Since August 1996, when President Clinton announced sweeping restrictions on tobacco sales and advertising, tobacco has had to do away with advertising at sporting events and in magazines with majority-teen audiences; billboard ads were restricted to black-and-white text and banned within 1,000 feet of schools.

As a result, tobacco companies will have to resort to new means of advertising and marketing if they're to continue enjoying brand-name recognition. It's a problem Brown & Williamson knows well. They even address it on their Web site.

Under the heading "Marketing Principles and Practices," the site says: "Our Company competes in an aggressive yet highly restricted industry, and our opportunities for success depend largely on our ability to develop and sustain effective and engaging marketing programs." And under "Evolving Technology," it explains: "In a rapidly changing environment, new approaches to marketing are continuously being developed. Brown & Williamson encourages exploration of new ideas and technologies, as well as the adoption of new practices which enhance our marketing capability and are consistent with our philosophy of marketing to adults."

One thing not available on the Web site, however, is the 1-800 number with the amusing message. Nor is it available through AT&T's 1-800 directory service.

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