She Sells Smokes: 30 “Women-Only” Vintage Tobacco Ads

Tobacco marketing has employed all sorts of effective (and often dubious) methods to get cigarettes into our mouths and tar into our lungs. One challenge they have faced it to get both men and women to inhale their carcinogenic fumes.

For men, it’s fairly easy.  We’ve covered this before: just feature a sexy woman, and men can’t resist.  The sex sells approach is a tried-and-true method that never fails.

For women, the most effective marketing technique is simply to feature a solitary woman in the ad. Naturally, women will relate to the product better if a fellow female represents the brand, rather than if a Marlboro man is hawking his pack of smokes. (Of course, couples smoking is an effective way to target both men and women; covered before here.)

Let’s have a look at some examples of women selling smokes across the decades:

 

Actress Myrna Loy “finds Luckies easy on her throat” in 1938.

 

Philip Morris – 1954

 

1955 – Actress Maureen O’Hara for Camel cigarettes

 

Gloria – 1958 Germany

 

1969 French Marlboro ad

 

1969 – Philip Morris

1969 French Royale Menthol – No sexual innuendo in this one, right?

 

1970 – Old Gold

 

1970 – Viceroy

 

1970 – Royale

 

1971 – L&M

 

1971 – L&M

 

1971 – Benson & Hedges

 

1971 – Vantage

 

1971 – Vantage

 

 

1974 – Tareyton 100’s

 

1974 – Salem

 

1975 – Benson & Hedges

 

1976 – Viceroy Super Longs

 

1978 – Chesterfield

 

1978 – Raleigh

 

1980 – Of course, I couldn’t do a post on women in tobacco advertising and not mention the mother-of-all female-targeted cigarette brands, Virginia Slims.  See an entire article: You’ve Come A Long Way, Baby: Virginia Slims Advertising Year By Year

 

1980 – Doral II

 

1981 – Benson & Hedges Lights

 

1981 – More (R.J. Reynolds)

 

1982 – More Lights 100s

1983 – Eve (L&M)

 

1987 – Lucky Strike

 

1989 – Capri