Wednesday, January 4, 2012

The fine arts at work in spurious advertsing: the Stanford School of Medicine site on tobacco advertising


Lucky Strike Vintage Ad
Originally uploaded by ozfan22
Our intention is to tell — principally through advertising images—the story of how, between the late 1920s and the early 1950s, tobacco companies used deceptive and often patently false claims in an effort to reassure the public of the safety of their products.

On first impression, most viewers will find these images outrageous, humorous, and so blatantly false as to trigger incredulity. But tobacco industry ad men also excelled in creative genius and had high levels of artistic skill. The best talent money could buy was recruited for this effort. Tobacco advertisers faced a daunting challenge: How do you sell a product which shortens the life of the user by an average of about 8 years?

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