Although women were seen as a new target audience, most brands showed women being offered a cigarette, not as the primary consumers. Lucky Strike changed this with the introduction of the "Reach for a Lucky instead of a sweet" campaign, launched by the American Tobacco Co. in 1928, appealing to women's desires to be fashionable. Lucky Strike sales soon skyrocketed 215% and the brand became the nation's best-selling cigarette in just two years.1-2
Attitudes about women and smoking were changing. This was reflected in the entertainment industry of the day. Many women in the movies were now smoking. And they weren't always the villains. Ads featured well-known movie stars, socialites, and other personalities extolling the virtues of Luckies as appetite suppressants. The ad at the upper left of this slide features Billy Burke, best know as Glinda, the Good Witch in "The Wizard of Oz." A 1935 survey revealed that 30% of movie heroines smoked on screen, while only 2.5% of the female villains smoked.3
1 STAT (Stop Teenage Addiction to Tobacco) Speakers' Guide & Slide Collection, Supplement II.
2 Brandt AM. Recruiting women smokers: the engineering of consent. JAMWA. 1996;51(1&2):63-66.
3 Women and Girls Against Tobacco |
