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Dialogues@RU is published
annually
by the
Writing Program at
Rutgers, The State
University of New Jersey
Volume 4
Fall 2005
Smoke Gets in Your Eyes: Advertising and the Tobacco Industry - Page 6
By Monica Yung
The cowboy is an almost universal symbol of admired masculinity . . . Marlboro was no longer just a cigarette, but a lifestyle, a smoke for the rugged individualist who longed for simpler times and the chance to escape to the wide-open spaces of Marlboro Country . . . Their own research found that the cowboy appealed to younger male smokers, who were looking for ways to show their independence. (Pope 91)
Therefore, it is evident that with enough exposure to images of sports and rugged-looking males, boys and men will inevitably correlate the vitality and pleasure of the cultural events and associations with cigarettes. As a result, the harmful effects of smoking are forgotten and the tobacco industry's products are assimilated into society.
Not only do the tobacco companies promote sales with images directed to the interests and fantasies of men, more recently, they have begun to employ internal control in an appeal to women, which challenges the assertion that advertising is directed to current and not new users. Smoking was originally regarded as a male habit, and a stigma was placed upon women who adopted it. However, in the 1920's, cigarette industries began to look for ways to appeal to the elusive half of the population that had not yet assumed the smoking habit. In the "Flapper Era," cigarette advertisers observed that women were increasingly interested in tossing aside the cultural restrictions that had hampered them, and wanted a slim figure to wear the new revealing dresses. As a result, Pope explains, the Lucky Strikes brand hired Amelia Earhart to promote its cigarettes with the appealing statement, "For a Slender Figure- Reach for a Lucky Instead of a Sweet" (82). At that time, Amelia Earhart was famous for her flight across the Atlantic , and the cigarette company hoped that hiring her would lead customers to believe that smoking Lucky Strikes would give them the independence and adventurousness of the aviator. Moreover, the advertisement presented the aviator's daring image together with the claim that the Lucky brand of cigarettes promoted a slim figure. Although this was an effective advertising approach, the habit was still relatively taboo for most females.
However, with the advent of the women's liberation in the early 1970's, cigarette advertisers saw that women needed to find a symbol of freedom and immediately responded by associating their products with equality and independence. As Ian Tyrrell affirms in Deadly Enemies, cigarette advertising succeeded "because it astutely targeted patterns of behaviour and beliefs within the community" (138). As a result of the triumphant Virginia Slims campaign, smoking became perceived as an assertion of autonomy for women. In Cigarettes , Pope quotes Dr. Brill's assertion that "some women regard cigarettes as symbols of freedom . . . More women now do the same work as men do . . . Cigarettes, which are equated with men, become torches of freedom" (85). In Merchants of Death , Larry White adds that
[w]hen women's liberation began to change women's perceptions in the early 1970's, Philip Morris was right in there with a new brand called Virginia Slims. The brand's slogan, "You've come a long way, baby," said it all. This ad campaign brilliantly associated smoking with exciting careers, sexual freedom, and all the improvements in women's lives promised by the women's liberation movement. (127)
This was the image that women of the seventies sought and wanted to emulate, and Virginia Slims succeeded by establishing a connection between smoking and the traits that women of the time admired, using lean, seemingly-independent models to imply that if women smoked Virginia Slims, they would become both independent and "slim." However, although this form of advertising is generally believed to be effective, dissenters would argue that simple awareness of an image "hardly implies that the viewer will consume the product advertised, which would mean that advertisers have an automatic sales machine" (High 72).