Love and cigarettes, marriage and cigarettes, sex and cigarettes? Nothing is off limits in these tobacco advertisements which feature couples in love. The advertisements work cigarettes into the everyday lives of couples, seemingly bringing couples closer together or enhancing their sexual connection. In the 1920s and 1930s, women were pictured as part of a couple so as to lessen the shock value of women smoking. However, as times changed and women smoking became widely acknowledged, men and women continued to show up together in cigarette advertisements in romantic scenarios. These advertisements were particularly effective at targeting women, capitalizing on the stereotypical female desire to find a husband or be taken care of by a man. Often, however, these ads were also effective for men, who would imagine, after seeing one of the ads, that a woman sensuously falls into a man’s arms with just the whiff of a cigarette or the mingling of fumes.
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Think Light – img1275
Couples in Love – img0683
Snobbish Cigarettes – img5532
Let's Smoke Girls – img0555
Before the First World War, smoking was associated with the “loose morals” of prostitutes and wayward women. Clever marketers managed to turn this around in the 1920s and 1930s, latching onto women’s liberation movements and transforming cigarettes into symbols of women’s independence. In 1929, as part of this effort, the American Tobacco Company organized marches of women carrying “Torches of Freedom” (i.e., cigarettes) down New York’s 5th Avenue to emphasize their emancipation. The tobacco industry also sponsored training sessions to teach women how to smoke, and competitions for most delicate smoker. Many of the advertisements targeting women throughout the decades have concentrated on women’s empowerment. Early examples include “I wish I were a man” so I could smoke (Velvet, 1912), while later examples like “You’ve come a long way baby” (Virginia Slims) were more clearly exploitive of the Women’s Liberation Movement. It is interesting to note that the Marlboro brand, famous for its macho “Marlboro Man,” was for decades a woman’s cigarette (“Mild as May” with “Ivory tips to protect the lips”) before it underwent an abrupt sex change in 1954. Only 5 percent of American women smoked in 1923 versus 12 percent in 1932 and 33 percent in 1965 (the peak year). Lung cancer was still a rare disease for women in the 1950s, though by the year 2000 it was killing nearly 70,000 women per year. Cancer of the lung surpassed breast cancer as the leading cause of cancer death among women in 1987.
Snobbish Cigarettes – img5533
Snobbish Cigarettes – img5536
Snobbish Cigarettes – img5537
Kamel Modern – img5959
Marlboro has historically been the leading cigarette brand among youth, while Camel consistently pushes forward creative advertising concepts to gain youth market share from Marlboro and hook teens and young adults. The Red Kamel campaign of 1996 is just one of Camel’s many advertising techniques employed to target the previously uninitiated or new smoker. RJR’s “marketing objectives” with Red Kamel revolved around “adding new cutting edge associations to the Camel brand family” (1).
The Red Kamel brand slogan clearly targeted youth irreverence: “Back After 80 Years For No Good Reason Except They Taste Good” (2). The Kamel brand was first introduced in 1913 and existed until 1936 when R.J. Reynolds replaced it with today’s Camel brand. The limited time “reintroduction” of Red Kamel in 1996 provided a retro-vintage appeal to the brand, and RJR designed the ads to be “innovative—new and old at the same time” (3). An RJR spokesperson explained that the characters portrayed in Red Kamel ads were presented as “interesting, independent people,” indicating that “the type of person who smoked Kamels in the early 1900s would still smoke them today.” The Red Kamel campaign offered RJR a new youth marketing technique to replace the Old Joe Camel campaign which had just been “voluntarily” withdrawn.
One internal document explains that the brand positioning was “lust for living,” and that the product was meant to appear “lustier” as well as “rebellious, adventurous, authentic,” with a “hip, unexpected” style clearly targeting youth markets (4).
1. “Red Kamel & Kamel Menthe (Men-Th) Factbook.” 07 Jan 1999. http://legacy.library.ucsf.edu/tid/tqm72d00
2. “RJR Re-Establishes Red Kamel Brand February 1, 1996 (960201) Statement and Q&A for Response Only.” RJ Reynolds. 01 Feb 1996. http://legacy.library.ucsf.edu/tid/oml13d00
3. “Red Kamel Is Back!” Caravan. 08 Apr 1996. http://tobaccodocuments.org/nysa_ti_s1/TI56580057.html
4. “1997 (19970000) Business Planning Meeting.” RJ Reynolds. 17 Sept 1996. http://legacy.library.ucsf.edu/tid/xyi72d00
Couples in Love – img0702
Love and cigarettes, marriage and cigarettes, sex and cigarettes? Nothing is off limits in these tobacco advertisements which feature couples in love. The advertisements work cigarettes into the everyday lives of couples, seemingly bringing couples closer together or enhancing their sexual connection. In the 1920s and 1930s, women were pictured as part of a couple so as to lessen the shock value of women smoking. However, as times changed and women smoking became widely acknowledged, men and women continued to show up together in cigarette advertisements in romantic scenarios. These advertisements were particularly effective at targeting women, capitalizing on the stereotypical female desire to find a husband or be taken care of by a man. Often, however, these ads were also effective for men, who would imagine, after seeing one of the ads, that a woman sensuously falls into a man’s arms with just the whiff of a cigarette or the mingling of fumes.
Couples in Love – img0711
Love and cigarettes, marriage and cigarettes, sex and cigarettes? Nothing is off limits in these tobacco advertisements which feature couples in love. The advertisements work cigarettes into the everyday lives of couples, seemingly bringing couples closer together or enhancing their sexual connection. In the 1920s and 1930s, women were pictured as part of a couple so as to lessen the shock value of women smoking. However, as times changed and women smoking became widely acknowledged, men and women continued to show up together in cigarette advertisements in romantic scenarios. These advertisements were particularly effective at targeting women, capitalizing on the stereotypical female desire to find a husband or be taken care of by a man. Often, however, these ads were also effective for men, who would imagine, after seeing one of the ads, that a woman sensuously falls into a man’s arms with just the whiff of a cigarette or the mingling of fumes.
