{"id":2586,"date":"2013-04-19T12:20:47","date_gmt":"2013-04-19T11:20:47","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.doctorfox.co.uk\/news\/?p=2586"},"modified":"2021-10-14T09:40:27","modified_gmt":"2021-10-14T08:40:27","slug":"the-history-of-cigarette-advertising-in-the-uk","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.doctorfox.co.uk\/news\/the-history-of-cigarette-advertising-in-the-uk\/","title":{"rendered":"The history of cigarette advertising in the UK"},"content":{"rendered":"

Last updated 14 October 2021<\/small><\/p>

\"cigarette-advertising\"It is a truth universally acknowledged that smoking is bad for your health. With increasing evidence that cigarettes can cause everything from strokes to cancer, a smoker in the 21st century does so in the full knowledge that they\u2019re playing a risky game of Russian roulette. But while anti-smoking ads and warnings are now the norm, advertising was once used to preach quite the opposite!<\/p>\n

Origins<\/h2>\n

Tobacco first came to England in 1565, brought back by Admiral Sir John Hawkins from his travels overseas, and for the first twenty years smoking remained a pastime of sailors.<\/p>\n

By the turn of the century smoking had started to gain popularity in other circles, but it wasn\u2019t without its critics. In 1604 King James I wrote that smoking was \u201cloathsome to the eye, hateful to the nose, harmful to the brain [and] dangerous to the lungs\u201d and consequently increased the tax on tobacco by a rather hefty 4,000%. Interestingly, he also noted that upon dissection, the lungs of several great smokers had been found to be coated with a sooty substance, but it wasn\u2019t enough to put people off.<\/p>\n

Indeed, smoking was even believed by some to protect against ill health, by protecting the body from miasmas (bad air). Consequently during The Great Plague (1665\u201366) it was made compulsory to smoke at Eton.<\/p>\n

1789 saw the first instance of tobacco advertising in a New York newspaper in the US and it wasn\u2019t long until it spread across the pond.<\/p>\n

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19th\u00a0Century<\/h2>\n

Coloured Magazine Ads
<\/b>The end of the nineteenth century (1870 onwards) saw the introduction of colour lithography, which allowed companies to create attractive coloured images to advertise their products, and many magazines (such as the popular Punch<\/a>) were soon carrying adverts for different tobacco brands.<\/p>\n

Cigarette Cards
<\/b>This also led to the introduction of pictured cigarette cards, which had previously just been used to stiffen the box.\u00a0 In 1887 W.D & H.O. Wills were one of the first to create collectible cards to put in their cigarette packets and typical themes included celebrities, models, sports and military heroes. Each set included around 25-50 cards and this practice remained popular until the 1940s.<\/p>\n

20th\u00a0Century (1900\u20131964)<\/h2>\n

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Cigarettes in Army Rations
<\/b>The 20th\u00a0century started off well, with the inclusion of a clause in the Children\u2019s Act of 1908 forbidding the sale of tobacco to those under the age of 16. Unfortunately, any progress was lost with the decision to include tobacco in army rations during the First World War (1916).<\/p>\n

Targeting Women
<\/b>When the war finished (1925) the tobacco business was booming with plenty of male soldiers hungry for more, and so the companies turned their attention to women. Images of glamorous women, babies and nurses were all used to convince women that not only was smoking feminine, but that it was also empowering and positively good for you!<\/p>\n

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Safe Cigarettes
<\/b>To combat any questions over the safety of smoking, tobacco companies started to label their products as \u2018mild\u2019, \u2018filtered\u2019 and \u2018calming\u2019.<\/p>\n

Celebrity Endorsements
<\/b>As entire pages in magazines and newspaper started to fill with coloured adverts, celebrity endorsements for cigarette brands gained in popularity and even Hollywood got on board.<\/p>\n

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Festive Advertising
<\/b>Unsurprisingly, by 1949 cigarettes had become an everyday essential, with an estimated 81% of men and 39% of women smoking. After all, when even Santa\u2019s smoking, it\u2019s hard to question its safety.<\/p>\n

Television Advertising
<\/b>Following the introduction of ITV in 1955, <\/b>cigarette companies began to advertise on TV. Still with no hard evidence to prove that smoking was bad for you, this was the age of misleading claims and even doctors were used to promote the tobacco companies\u2019 agenda!<\/p>\n