The Cigarette Century

by Allan Brandt

  Attacks on advertising as a manipulative evil tended to sound shrill to the public. Were ads so powerful, and men and women so easily flimflammed? The public insisted that it could assess extravagant claims dispassionately; advertisements, many argued, were but a new form of theater. The advertisers thought otherwise. In 1928, American Tobacco spent $7 million to advertise Lucky Strikes, second only to General Motors. More than twenty other companies spent more than $1 million on advertising campaigns, all incorporating many of the characteristics of the Lucky Strike campaign.30

  Political figures and policy makers approved of the creation of demand for its positive effect on the country’s economy. As President Calvin Coolidge explained in his 1926 speech to the International Advertising Association, “Mass production is only possible where there is mass demand. Mass demand has been created almost entirely through advertising.” With the sale of goods increasing by 400 percent between 1900 and 1925, at a time when the population increased only by 50 percent, the great expansion of consumer culture clearly indicated more than simple population growth.31

  The rise of aggressive national marketing, and the powerful techniques of advertising and promotion it utilized, raised important questions about the character of the consumer culture.32 How powerful was advertising in its ability to bend consumer behavior? What if such power came to be used to support antisocial ends? The rise of national advertising raised new doubts about manipulation and behavior in a mass society. And the cigarette, as a popular icon of the consumer culture built on the edifice of mass marketing, only intensified these questions.

  But even as many worried about their manipulative power, advertisers developed and refined their field. Lord & Thomas, Lasker’s agency, used a shrewdly self-promotional pamphlet in 1911 to urge the “professionalization” of advertising. Seeking to explain the rise of agencies and clients alike, it emphasized advertising’s power to change action:No vocation with such far-reaching control over the minds of millions is yet so poorly appreciated, in proportion to its limitless capacity for good or evil.

  • To compel a definite Action on the part of millions he has never seen—

  • To cause minds of these millions to work, in accord, upon an impulse which he transmits, via type, and sway them inexorably toward the goal he elects—

  • To determine in advance that, through his will and skill, they shall make a concerted movement, toward a purpose of purchase they never previously contemplated, in direct response to his printed word—

  That is the mission, privilege and power of the modern advertising man who can live up to his opportunities.33

  Portraying the agency as an “altruistic” force spurring industry and consumer into relationships of social value, Lord & Thomas now argued, with considerable self-interest, that advertised products protect consumers.

  The manufacturer who trademarks and extensively advertises an article thereby proves his own faith in the merit of the article, and practically puts up a bond to vouch for it.

  All this means that a manufacturer who sells unadvertised and un-branded goods can quietly take out of quality or quantity enough to compensate him for advance in his costs, to maintain a liberal profit.

  The grandiosity of such claims led to concerns about the possible abuse of advertising.

  By the 1920s, it was common to define selling as a science. Advertisers and their critics believed the processes of motivating consumer behavior rested on techniques that could be rationally articulated and reproduced. During the Great War, new attention was directed to motivation, public opinion, and the rational manipulation of mass behavior, and the admen believed they could apply this knowledge in peacetime as well. Their confidence was indeed staggering. As Walter Dill Scott, a founder of the field of advertising psychology, wrote:Every competent writer of advertisements understands the importance of psychological principles for his work. All students of the subject are aware that their work must conform to the laws of mental action so far as these are known or can be determined.34

  Psychologists catalogued a wide range of drives and desires, ranging from hunger and thirst to sexuality and beauty, that individuals could “satisfy” in the marketplace of consumer goods. The advertiser’s role was to identify particular products with specific forms of gratification.

  When advertisers for Chesterfields noted bluntly in the 1920s “They Satisfy,” they explicitly subscribed to this psychology of needs. Whereas earlier models of markets focused on the interrelationship between supply and demand, modern advertising in the consumer culture emphasized the creation of both need and desire. The cigarette in particular suggested to many observers that demand could be fashioned and shaped by the techniques of advertising. For example, an analyst writing in Advertising and Selling in 1936 explained the basis of tobacco advertising this way:You know a large part of the public really doesn’t know what it wants. Our big task in recent years has been to dig up new likes or dislikes which we think might strike the public’s fancy, and sell them to the public. We have dealt with diet, weight, coughs, mildness, quality of tobacco, nerves, toasting tobacco, youthful inspirations and a host of other subjects. The public must be given ideas as to what it should like, and it is quite surprising sometimes how the public is sold on what might look, in sales conference, like the brainchild of a demented person. The old sales bywords “know your customer’s needs” have been remolded to “know what your customer should need and then educate him on those needs.”35

  The targeting of woman by cigarette advertisers provides a prime example of this creation of needs. If women were perceived as the arbiters of morality in late nineteenth-century American culture, now they were seen as the principal force in the ethos of consumption.36 As one advertising psychologist explained, “The advertiser, especially the one using large space consistently, has within his power not only to affect temporarily, but to mold permanently, the thought and attitude he wants his particular public to have with reference to the relative importance of style and beauty and such other factors as he may choose to play up by means of advertising.”37 Beginning with Lucky Strike’s “Reach” campaign, cigarette ads targeted to women made explicit appeals to both style and beauty. As a symbol of both attributes, the cigarette became deeply embedded in the politics of gender in the 1920s and 1930s. Smoking for women, in this crucial phase of successful recruitment, became part and parcel of the good life as conceived by the American consumer culture and explicitly represented in advertising campaigns. The effectiveness of these campaigns was heightened and reinforced by public relations efforts to create a positive environment for the new images. Together, the ad campaigns and the PR promoted a product and a behavior that now possessed specific and appealing social meanings of glamour, beauty, autonomy, and equality.

  The vehicle for the sale of American Tobacco remained the same for women as for men: a single, national brand with malleable, targeted images. Observers of the consumer culture looked to the cigarette as the principal exemplar of the rise of national brands. “The habitual smoker,” noted Printers’ Ink in 1941, “buys brands rather than cigarettes and it is the advertising that has built up this prestige in the consumers’ eyes for a particular product.”38 This was especially important because the cigarette was largely an undifferentiated product. Certainly, cigarettes varied in tobacco blend, production, and taste, but it was through advertising and marketing that brands came to be distinguished. “There can be little doubt that if Reynolds, Liggett & Myers, or American had to give up either their secret formulas or their brand names, they would keep the brand names,” noted Fortune in 1936.39 In no other industry was the importance of brand so heralded.

  Observers of the new consumer watched this process of branding with considerable interest. A frequently repeated experiment asked blindfolded smokers to identify their regular brand. Smokers confidently asserted their ability to do this, but they invariably failed at high rates.40 In 1928, early consumer advocate Stuart Chase reported:Another [s
ubject], while smoking a Camel, which he had named a Lucky Strike, said that Luckies never hurt his throat, but “go down easy and smooth, ” whereas Camels are “terrible and stick in one’s throat.”41

  By the 1940s, more intensive investigation confirmed the similarity of all brands. Reader’s Digest, eager to separate “fact and fiction” in cigarette advertising, commissioned a research laboratory to investigate the “objective” differences among the major brands. A “smoking robot” collected samples of nicotine and tars as well as other data. Reader’s Digest concluded that “the differences between brands are, practically speaking, small” and that “it makes no earthly difference which of the leading cigarettes you buy.”42

  These kinds of experiments, repeated through the 1920s, 1930s, and 1940s, came to be viewed as demonstrating the power of image over substance, and promotion over quality. The cigarette came to epitomize this crucial aspect of the consumer culture, in which advertisers manipulated meaning and experience, creating needs and consumer loyalties. As one critic lamented: “Has there been in all history so colossal a standardizing process—such a vast demonstration of the sheeplike qualities of the human race as in the spread of the tobacco habit? Has not this increase in the use of cigarets been brought about through the expenditure of millions of dollars of advertising through the hired misuse of psychology, art, writing, printing, and radio; through the degradation of newspapers and magazines?” 43 Brand differentiation—and the rise of the cigarette—was viewed by critics as representative of a new and dangerous element: the artificial creation of desire for purposes of profit.

  The central importance of brand differentiation, which came to be deeply embedded in the consumer culture, was that it marked not only “differences” in products but differences in consumers as well. Brand choice became an indicator of status and judgment, an assertion of the consumer’s individuality. For critics of the consumer culture, cigarette brands and their aggressive promotion were a primary example of the “invention” of choice. A standardized product was used to promote “individualism.” The paradox of asserting one’s individuality through “market choice” was not lost on contemporary observers. The cigarette in its marketing and advertising walked the fine line so characteristic of the consumer culture between demanding conformity and the assertion of individuality. “The constant struggle within the individual to be different and at the same time to conform manifests itself in convention and custom, style and fashion, and their more extreme forms known as fads and crazes,” noted one advertising expert. “This shifting of the conformity, non-conformity attitude forms the basis of a larger proportion of our class advertising.”44

  Although it is impossible, at this distance, to adequately reconstruct the subtle differences in the meanings of particular brands to smokers in the 1920s and 1930s, we can nevertheless recognize the importance of such differences and the process by which they were constructed. Brand choice—and loyalty—conferred status in what one historian has called “the drama of consumer desire.”45

  George Washington Hill, among others, understood that mass advertising was but one side of the marketing coin. Effective marketing required the deployment of a wide range of complementary techniques, from public relations to corporate design. Advertising had to be sensitive to cultural norms and desires, but the culture was changing. Could it be intentionally changed? Could the “fit” between product and patron be consciously altered? In pursuing this objective, Hill enlisted the efforts of Edward Bernays. A nephew of Sigmund Freud, born in Vienna in 1891, Bernays came to the United States with his family a year later. After graduating from Cornell, he went to work for the Committee on Public Information during World War I, where he developed both his communication skills and his theory of propaganda.46 Following the war, Bernays embraced the new psychology and the new corporate order, eagerly offering the techniques of mass opinion to corporate clients. Unlike his predecessors in the “science” of public opinion, he did not see his role as an “educator.” Rather, Bernays looked to exploit the insights of psychology to shape mass behavior and values.

  Just as the cigarette emerged from World War I as a central element in the culture, so too did public relations. Bernays quickly fashioned himself into the first “counsel on public relations,” offering his services to a wide range of industries in the United States and abroad. As the new field’s chief advocate and publicist, he came to define public relations as the science of the “group mind” and “herd reaction.” A central element of Bernays’s approach was the use of media, particularly what he called the “created event.” As he explained in 1923, “The counsel on public relations not only knows what news value is, but knowing it, he is in a position to make news happen.”47 The staging of public events, produced to draw news coverage, marked a central element of the “counsel’s” corporate responsibility. Bernays eagerly pointed out that generating news incurred no advertising costs and was also free of the taint of self-interest and manipulation already being questioned within the advertising industry.48

  The manipulation of public opinion, values, and beliefs would, in the 1920s, become a dominant aspect of the consumer culture. It was at this time that blurring the line between advertising and the news became a critically important technique in marketing products of all kinds. Bernays prized the power of the news media precisely because it hid the interests of the industry. He understood that his behind-the-scenes machinations—typically conducted surreptitiously on behalf of clients—could easily disturb the delicate trust on which the consumer culture rested. To prevent clients from becoming “unsocial or otherwise harmful,” he argued, the counsel of public relations must play a central role in guiding corporate policy. He devised a set of functions for modern PR sharply distinguished from those of publicist and press agent; yet even Bernays’s ingenuity and ego could not make this distinction permanent.49

  Bernays’s work on behalf of American Tobacco illustrates this approach to promotion. In 1929, he outlined the structure of a proposed PR arm for American Tobacco. The “Tobacco Information Service Bureau,” he suggested, would provide news releases and information in an array of media and “provide a certain scientific background for what the Bureau may from time to time say from a scientific standpoint.” This Bureau should develop strong relations with the press, placing articles that would ultimately favor the interest of American Tobacco. Examples of stories, he suggested, might be “INTERNAL REVENUE STATISTICS ON TOBACCO INTERPRETED,” or “DOCTORS SAY CIGARETTES REDUCE NUMBER OF BACTERIA IN YOUR MOUTH.” This “educational work” would help to overcome the criticism Hill’s campaigns attracted, as well as defray ongoing concerns about the health effects of smoking.

  Bernays also traded ideas with Hill to “increase good-will and sales” for Lucky Strikes. He suggested, for example, planting photos and news articles linking cigarettes, women, beauty, and a range of smoking accessories.

  Feature story for fashion editors on importance of cigarette cases and holders to smartly dressed women as part of their ensemble. This with photographs. Propaganda to be injected into the story regarding toasting.50

  A year earlier, Hill’s first assignment for Bernays had been to assist in the campaign for soliciting women smokers. Hill reportedly explained, “It will be like opening a new gold mine right in our front yard.” According to Bernays, “Hill became obsessed by the prospect of winning over the large potential female market for Luckies.”51 Lasker’s “Reach for a Lucky Instead of a Sweet” campaign was then in production; Hill and Bernays set out to exploit the pitch’s impact. With women’s fashions moving to a new emphasis on slimness, Lucky Strike ads proclaimed their product as a tool for beauty and physical attraction. Bernays sought to enlist the fashion industry, sending out hundreds of Parisian haute couture photos of slender models to magazines and newspapers. To strengthen his case, he solicited medical writings on the deleterious impact of sugar on the human body and then used the media to broadcast the findings.

 
He understood his role as working behind the scenes to create support for the more overt marketing upon which public attention and opinion would form. On behalf of the “Reach for a Lucky” campaign, Bernays—without ever noting his relationship with American Tobacco—sponsored a conference on the evolution of the modern ideal of beauty. Artists at this meeting insisted that the “slim woman [is] the ideal American type.”

  Another tool that Bernays employed was the survey—quick and dirty polls of social attitudes or practices. In his hands, the survey was not an instrument to measure public opinion but a technique for shaping it. Surveying department store managers, he again found support for the Lucky Strike campaigns’ emphasis on the modern figure. “According to this survey” announced a Bernays press release, “the slender, modish saleswoman is in demand and can earn more for herself and her employer than her heavier sisters.”52

  Bernays also helped shape public reaction to American Tobacco’s attack on “sweets.” When the campaign elicited protest and the threat of legal action from confectioners, he sought to portray such competition as in consumers’ interest and to define the battle between American Tobacco and the candy industry as characteristic of an important and timely shift in American economic life. He eagerly sponsored “news” articles and then, if they served the company’s interest, had them widely reprinted and distributed. Articles by chemists, agricultural experts, and physicians were solicited to underscore the themes of ongoing advertising campaigns. Physician Clarence Lieb, for example, recruited to write in support of the “moderation” campaign, explained his position in language that echoed American Tobacco ad copy:It may also be said that in every form of our complex civilization, whether in work or play, in social life, in eating and other forms of indulgence, particularly in eating between meals, excess seems to have become the rule instead of the exception and the thought of moderation is like a small voice crying in the wilderness.53