When advertising promoted tobacco

Not so very long ago, tobacco advertisements appeared on screen, in magazines, in newspapers and even on billboards. Here is a quick look back at the time when tobacco could still be advertised.

The first cigarette advertisements

The first tobacco advertisements appeared towards the end of the 1800s. Marshall’s and Cigares de Joy even boasted that their cigarettes and cigars were a genuine remedy for asthma, bronchitis, sore throats and so on. A little later, in 1904, Happy Thought brought medicine directly into its advertising by showing a doctor on horseback, a (large) packet of cigarettes under his arm, galloping towards his patients.

When medicine endorsed the cigarette

Probably inspired by Happy Thought, Lucky Strike turned to science to have its cigarettes endorsed. Between 1927 and 1930, a series of advertisements featuring doctors and various medical conditions presented cigarettes as a cure. In 1930 Old Gold joined in, followed by Camel and Chesterfield twenty years later. The latter even ran a study on the subject, which it presented as proof that cigarettes were good for the bronchi, the throat and more.

The cigarette advertising war

The link between medicine and the cigarette was already so pervasive that brands had to find new strategies in order to stand out. From 1936 onwards, open letters signed by doctors were published in scientific journals. Some physicians even advertised cigarettes directly.

After health came happiness

With the medical field heavily overworked, brands moved on to pleasure in order to stand out once more. Old Gold was one of the pioneers in the 1960s, closely followed by Lucky Strike. Brands then began putting children on show, as Marlboro and Philip Morris did in 1951. Later, the cigarette moved into sport (tennis above all), then into a sexual register (Celestino Vega between 1990 and 2001, Don Diego, Tiparillo and others). In France, this came to an end in 1991 with the Évin Act.