Jason Measimer
Professor Elaine Nelson
English 112
14 March 2015
Cigarette Advertising
From an early age, cigarette companies have made a major impact in the advertising world, and people in North America and around the world. Without warning of the harmful effects of smoking cigarettes, companies could say anything desired to spark an interest in the people to make them want to smoke. For example cigarette companies would depict doctors smoking cigarettes to saying their brand of cigarettes are safer and less irritation for your throat, but what really keeps consumers interested and hungry for more?
A huge reason to why these advertisements work is due to a strategy called the exposure effect. Advertisement companies pound our minds and eyes with constant advertisements via billboard, television ads etc. This strategy keeps our exposure to the ads high and pulls us into wanting to buy the items being advertised (TheAdTakeDown). Another way advertisement remain successful is the use of a variety of appeals to seem appetizing to new and continuing consumers of the product. The appeal to stand out the most in such ads would be an emotional appeal as a whole. Emotional appeals depict a person’s “deep-lying desire, and picturing state that individuals privately yearn for” (Rosen 552). Companies used to always have a “mister cool” or a person with power and money smoking their brand of cigarettes. This would connect the idea of if you smoke these cigarettes; you could also have the fame and power they have. A good representation of this would be the Joe Camel campaign in 1988. Known as the Smooth Character, the camel used in the advertisement is always seen doing something out of the norm with his money and women in a smooth/cool fashion with a Camels brand cigarette hanging from his mouth. Analyzing this advertisement, you can see that it used many different types of basic appeals. The need for sex is one that stands out among most advertisements. People with the need of sex see these Camel advertisements with the beautiful women, like the 1988 Camel advertisement, and its pulls them into the connection between Camel cigarettes and women being attracted to you while you smoke. This will also suggest the targeting of teen and adult males. Another use of appeals used in the Joe Camel advertisements is the need for attention. Following the idea of the mister cool image, the Camel in normally seen with an abundance of followers around him, seen in another 1988 Camel advertisement, giving him all the attention he wants. Not only does the Camel cigarette company use these appeals in their favor, but almost all the late types of advertisements. For example, the Marlboro Company depicting a good ole mister cool cowboy. He never says a word but the way the company shows him off seems to make people want to buy and smoke their brand of cigarettes. All older advertisement companies seem to follow in some way the basic fifteen appeals by Jib Fowles. With all the appeals and strategies to sell cigarettes still the same in today’s age, some things have changed throughout the years.
In a 1947 Camel cigarette ad, the head line starts off as “More Doctors smoke Camels.” This ad tries to give off the effect that if doctors smoke, then it has to be safe for everyone. It gives the people a false sense of safety will smoking. Another line states “I’m going to grow a hundred years old!” (Rosen 578). The advertisement just show yet again another false sense of safety for smokers, more than not lying to consumers about the health risk of smoking cigarettes. In today’s age you can see a