The next time you buy a carton of cigarettes-and it may very well be the last time you buy a carton of cigarettes!-look at the coins in your hand before you turn them over to the cashier.
Some of that money is going to go into tobacco advertising. Perhaps as little as three cents. Perhaps, if you're smoking one of the newer brands, as much as forty, fifty, or sixty-five cents will go to tobacco advertising. Generally, somewhere between five and fifteen cents.
That sum is your own little contribution toward keeping you smoking. I figured out once that my expenditures for group health insurance weren't too much higher than my contributions toward cigarette advertising; in a tidy sort of way, I was paying for my medical future coming and going.
A cent or two a day from each of us sort of adds up by the end of the year. In 1960, with your help and mine, the tobacco industry was able to spend almost $32,000,000 in newspaper tobacco advertising; $26,000,000 in magazine tobacco advertising; $76,900,000 on radio tobacco advertising; $35,000,000 on television tobacco advertising.* And that doesn't take into consideration the other forms of promotion and tobacco advertising for which we-if I may use the expression-cough up our nickels and dimes: those lovely billboards along the highways, the pretty displays at the corner druggist, the engaging car-cards in buses and commuter trains. The government's massive "Statistical Abstract" tells us that the tobacco industry is a four and a half billion dollar affair, and that its advertising budget in 1960 was 5.4 per cent of this sum. More than $240,000,000, in other words, or about a buck and a quarter per man, woman, teenager, child, and infant in these United States.
I'm not really objecting to the size of the industry. I imagine that the tobacco people contribute a lot in taxes; and if things keep going the way they are, we're likely to need a lot of help in building hospitals and things like that.
And I'm not even one of those who wants cigarette packages to be marked "Danger! Poison!" or "Not to be sold to minors under 21" or "Caution: Contains carcinogenic substances, including arsenic."
No, what concerns me is the hypnotic effect of all this advertising.
* By 1962, this figure had mounted to $75,000,000 for television tobacco advertising.
You're the Subject of Planned "Meddling"
Psychologists define "suggestion" as "the process by which one person, without argument, command or coercion, directly induces another to act in a given way or to accept a certain belief, opinion, or plan of action."
There's no conspiracy involved here, but the total effect of tobacco advertising is to "induce" us to smoke more by using what Vance Packard called "insights gleaned from psychiatry and the social sciences" in an effort to "change our thinking habits, our purchasing decisions, our thought processes." Says Packard-the success of these large-scale efforts is "often impressive."
No self-respecting advertising man would call his efforts "hypnosis" or "suggestion," particularly since there is now a lovely phrase-"motivational research" -that can be used instead. But no matter what you call the process, it is summed up nicely in this line from The Wall Street Journal: "The business man's hunt for sales boosters is leading him into a strange wilderness, the subconscious mind." Repeat-"the subconscious mind."
Who has Time to Be Worried?
Would you mind very much if we plodded over to the cranberry bogs for a moment, so that we can see how our subconscious reacts to tobacco advertising? The farmers who raise and market those berries are not an affluent lot, and they can't afford to spend very much on advertising and promotion. As a matter of fact, their total advertising budget in 1960 was less than a twentieth of the sum spent on television alone by the tobacco industry.
But let's assume that at the time of the "cranberry scare," it was the cranberry people, not the cigarette manufacturers, who were the fourth largest advertisers in newspapers, the sixth largest in television, the twelfth largest in magazines, and the fourth largest in radio.
Let's also assume that they'd been in roughly this position of importance not for a year or two, but for decades.
That, for all your life, you had been seeing and hearing their advertisements.
That, during the cranberry scare, their advertising efforts had not ceased.
When you turned on your television set, then, this is what you'd see and hear:
- A world-famous athlete sips some cranberry juice. "Ummmmm," he says. "That's good!" Then he hits a homer.
- Beautiful young man offers beautiful young lady a spoon of cranberry jelly. She tastes, smiles, and cuddles over to him. Love plus good food-what a combination!
- Serious young man explains why "Grggssshh" cranberry juice is the best. First the berries are roasted, toasted, vacuumed, washed, sunned, and aged; then they are filtered through devices perfected at Oak Ridge, Cape Canaveral, and Boeing; then the juice is made to filter itself. And then it's ready to be served to the best people at the best clubs and cabarets. Fortunately, however, you too can buy it.
- Beauty queen, picture of radiant health, asks you if you aren't getting bored with your present fruit. Suggests you change to new cleaner, tangier, fresher, kinder cranberry jelly. If you do, it'll be like a cool swim in the seas off Majorca; it'll be the way fruit should taste; it'll be living!
My hunch is that after a few more commercials of this sort-buttressed by the print advertisements in your newspapers and magazines, and fortified by the fact that you already drink and eat a bushel of cranberries a day anyhow (and can't seem to get off the stuff)-that you'll forget about the cranberry scare mentioned a few hundred words back. As a matter of fact, with so many pretty folk eating cranberries in front of you, your own taste buds will probably have been stimulated … and off to the kitchen you'll go for another quick berry.
Getting Back to Harsher Reality
I hope you don't think this little fantasy has been silly. I think it's deadly serious, and I use the word "deadly" advisedly. This is hypnotism and suggestion, affecting not only you but your children; if both husband and wife smoke, their children are twice as likely to smoke as are the children of non-smokers. The impact of cigarette advertising can't be measured in terms of packs or cartons; it has to be measured in terms of generations. Consider this-in 1958, a year in which the public was being very adequately informed about the cancer and coronary diseases that are so frequently linked directly with excessive smoking, the consumption of cigarettes per person over 15 years of age reached a new peak. We consumed 430 billion cigarettes-about 3600 per person. And that was way back in '58, before teen-age smoking had reached such excessive proportions that a national television program on the subject was warranted!
The odds are that you're not going to be able to stop smoking until you learn to withstand, ignore, and even benefit from the tobacco advertising bombardment to which you are continuously subjected.
Soon I'll show you how to do that. In the words of the tobacco advertising profession, "it's fun."
Let's begin right now.
It May Hurt-But Let's Search for Some Ads
After you have read this chapter, please hunt out as many cigarette commercials and tobacco advertisements as you can. It may sound juvenile of me, but I want you to talk back to those copywriters and salesmen about their tobacco advertising.
Before you talk back, however, listen to the spiels and read the copy. Carefully, intently. Act as if your life depended on it, because it may …
The last thing the tobacco advertising agencies want you to do, of course, is to pay strict attention to every element of their message. If you listen carefully, you may challenge it. If you watch with more than half an eye, listen with more than half an ear, or do more than glance at a photograph, a headline and a tagline, you may realize that much of the advertisement makes no sense whatsoever.
Worst of all from the advertiser's point of view is the fact that if you consciously evaluate the message, you won't subconsciously accept the suggestions it contains. So all the advertiser wants you to get is an "image." A fleeting feeling of pleasure, security, luxury, wisdom, or romance …
What I want you to do, though, is to begin to destroy those images. And we've got to do it before you stop smoking, because an important part of "talking back" is on-the-spot testing of the manufacturer's claims.
There's a quick way to test any claims made by anybody, be he salesman or politician. You simply ask three questions:
"How come?"
"So what?"
"Who says?"
These nasty questions probe to the heart of any statement. If a statistic is thrown at you, they enable you to test the validity of that statistic, its source and its significance. If cigarette smoking is somehow equated with desirable things, these questions get the images back down to earth.
For a number of legal reasons, I cannot quote actual advertisements. So while I sort of hum the tunes, you fill in the words. The first thing you'll notice is that no cigarette advertiser claims that his product is good for you. That's a thing of the past, and I see no reason to recall yesterday's sins. But the advertiser does try to get you to "identify" his cigarette with "things" that are good for you. With health and agility and youthful radiance. With people who don't cough (actors and singers), with people who can't be short of wind (athletes), with people who should know a lot about science and health (anybody in a white jacket).
Get to recognize this "transfer of identity." Get so you can say, "I know that swimming's good for me, Mac. But cigarettes aren't." Be ready to tell the pitchman that you love the American landscape as much as anybody else, but that this doesn't mean that you should also love cancer-causing tars.
Learn All the Sales Tricks That Are Used
The advertiser wants you to feel that the best people (which generally means young people, rich people, incredibly handsome and beautiful people, and above all healthy people) smoke his brand. So if you want to "get with 'em," you'd better smoke the advertised brand, too.
"Wait!" you'd better tell him. "I'm smoking one of your other brands! An hour ago you showed me that I could be young, rich, handsome and healthy if I smoked Flubbs. Now you want me to switch to Gribbles. That isn't fair!"
And think about those people in the ads, too. Don't they ever cough? And why do they smile so broadly at the first puff? Do they like that whiff of phosphorous oxides from the end of the match? (Good-you're fighting the fleeting "image" they want you to have: that their cigarettes are pure pleasure.) And listen carefully to the comparisons. Mac (or the model in the white jacket) will tell you that the tobacco in his cigarette is "purer." Purer than what, Mac? Purer than it was last week? Or purer than the other brands your company makes? Or purer than pure tar? So very pure that the tars in it won't give a mouse cancer?
Be Mean-Do What They Say!
Above all, give them a sporting chance. When the models light up, you should, too. When the announcer describes the myriad joys to be had from his cigarette, it's time for you to take a deep drag. Hold it for a moment. Don't exhale immediately. Are you getting a little dizzy? Aren't you about to cough? Is this really what your poor throat needs?
Tell Mac. Tell him that the smoke doesn't go down like syrup-it stings like you-know-what. Let's break that image, too. Cigarettes aren't honey and champagne and sweet cider and pure spring water all in one. They burn.
When you read or hear the cigarette company slogans, add a few choice words to them. If Flubbs says that it offers you some sort of additional protection, you can then volunteer interesting information about the things they're protecting you from. For example, the fellow who smokes two packs or more a day has a seventy times greater chance of lung cancer, according to one unbiased source, than the man who doesn't smoke anything. Tell the announcers about that-do you think they know it?
When you come to the advertisements for the filter-tips and the mentholated and the mentholated-with-filter-tips, you'll be at your busiest. For one thing, they make a smoke into something more than a smoke. It becomes an adventure-with sports cars, canoes, high diving, mountain climbing, and all sorts of wonderful things.
So much happens so fast that it's hard to remind the people you hear on the radio and watch on television that while filters are really swell and probably a great improvement, they don't quite catch all those nasty ingredients. They don't even seem to filter out the stuff that makes you cough, snore, and clear your throat. Tell Mac that you're puffing away on a filter-tip right now, and describe your sensations. Do they match his?
If he glowingly describes the frigid qualities of his mentholated brand, you'd better remind him that the smoke entering your mouth is still pretty hot, produced at a burning tip hot enough to char paper and wood. And no matter what, hot smoke raises the temperature of your lips and mouth. "Mac," you should say, "please get the facts straight. I'm beginning to lose faith in you."
Poor Mac-you're going to get him confused.
But you'll be setting yourself straight.
Other Countries Are Clamping Down
And if you ever find yourself feeling silly about fighting the dangers of cigarette and tobacco advertising as it presently exists, consider this:
Italy and Great Britain have already cracked down on cigarette advertisers and tobacco advertising. The West German government is currently considering an anti-cigarette campaign to be financed, nicely enough, with half of the $1,000,000 it collects in the form of cigarette taxes.
The British government has sponsored an advertising campaign of its own; posters proclaim smoking as a hazard. British tobacco companies have agreed to take cigarette advertising off television during children's viewing hours.
In Italy, tobacco sales are controlled by a state monopoly, and no advertising of Italian brands is permitted. Now no foreign brands may be advertised either. The penalties for infraction are severe.
In Denmark, leaders of the tobacco industry of that country have agreed voluntarily to cut out all cigarette and tobacco advertising except in daily newspapers.
And each day brings more news of this land.
Tell Mac the news.
Don't keep the hypnotic effects of tobacco advertising to yourself.
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