Babies & Celebs In Commercials Part 1
Leave it to Corporate America to use anything in there vivid imaginations to come up with entertaining commercials and print ads. Everyone still remembers certain older endorsements because of the characters that were used. Depending on your age here is a list of commercials and their memorable characters. First up are Cigarettes:
Cigarettes: Yes they used to actually advertise on TV those horrible cancer sticks. Those rolled tobacco sticks however made their prospective companies millions of dollars in profit. And the more money they made the more creative the commercials would be.
Most of the younger generation will not remember many of these endorsements and even though we have facts now that tell us smoking is bad for our health. The amount of advertisements for cigarettes were utterly amazing. Every Hollywood star endorsed at least one cigarette brand. Now those endorsements are gone, but the legacy they left behind could chronicle the time in which they appeared.
Ronnie pitching Christmas Gifts
It is hard not to find somewhere on the web an advertisement on the new electronic cigarettes ( we are sponsoring one here and clicking on the link will get you 10% your purchase).
The Marlboro Man was on every bus, billboard and yes TV commercial. Rugged good looking and if you smoked a Marb then you rode a horse and worked HARD (cough). A note to remember, the actor who played the Marlboro man died of lung cancer and one of his last public endorsements was in a commercial, not for Marlboro, but for the 
Cancer Society. By the way, Marlboro ran ads with babies holding cigarettes in their hands, no shit!!
Joe Camel the cartoon character for Camel. It was a very successful campaign. Not only because of the creativity, but the huge outrage of various organizations that slammed Camel for trying to go after the younger audience to start smoking earlier in life. Other notable characters before Joe Camel came along was one John Wayne (he also died from lung cancer).
One other character was not exactly one person but a group of people. They ran a series of ads that stated “More Doctors Smoke Camels Than Any Other Cigarette” how’s that for an endorsement?? Not to be outdone Viceroy used dentists in their ads (Maybeyellow teeth were “in” back then).
Winston: “Winston tastes good like a cigarette should” for the longest time that was Winston’s slogan. Although we are not completely sure what a cigarette is actually suppose to taste like? Tar? Toxic Ammonia? Maybe that great taste of Nicotine. Winston had used cartoon character before Camel ever thought of them. They used the Flintstones, yup. Fred and Barney were closet puffers when Wilma and Betty weren’t around.
Also one of the largest pitch men for Winston’s, back in the ’60′s and ’70′s, was one Alan Landers who was the face on every print ad. Dash and debonair, everywhere you looked there was the Winston guy (he passed away last year from lung cancer).
Tareyton this brand is no longer around maybe because it caused so many fights. Their claim to fame was their ads that showed a pretty women and sometimes and older accountant type man with a black eye with the phrase “I would rather fight then switch” Looks like people switched as they were sick of fighting.
To finish out this area of products are a smish mash of quick notes. Chesterfield used to have a dancing woman in a large cigarette box. Virginia Slims this cigarette went after the female smoker and it worked, their phrase back in the 60′s and 70′s was “You’ve Come a Long Way Baby”! Also to be noted was another cigarette that went after the female demographic it was called Eve and they 
made the cigarettes pretty with all kinds of flowers on them. Women were smarter then that and the brand quickly failed.
There were also attempts at going after other demographics. In particular the Afro-American smoker Kent tried with a half-assed campaign relating their cigarettes with rappers, the only thing missing was a picture of a 40 oz in the back ground. And then there was More, that not only went after the Black segment but in particular the black female niche. They also felt coloring the paper of the cigarette to first making it beige in color to later on going to a deep chocolate brown would make people flock to buy them.
Pall Mall used the holiday time to advertise like crazy using jolly Ole Saint Nick puffing away. Viceroy’s used Mickey Mantle in their print ads, seems Mickey pitched Camels also.
Finally a new French ad campaign to get people to stop smoking uses blow jobs to quit. You heard me right, somehow they equate that smoking cigarettes somehow interferes having oral sex. Leave it to the French. Although it would make sense not to give oral sex with a cigarette in your mouth, duh. I know I left out many other classic ads with cigarettes, not to mention that the ads in other countries are just as well known and successful as the ones above here in the states. Unfortunately right now all the major cigarette brands have now put all their time and money behind advertising in third world countries, where the demographics are overwhelming for new smokers who start each and every day. Many Far Eastern countries use their celebrities to endorse cigarettes.
I have inserted many of the ads I spoke about here, but if you want to actually see the old commercials here is a website that has the entire archive of old TV cigarette advertisements. This is actually a quick shout out to this website called the Archive.org. It has so many interesting files you could get lost there for days.
Our next part of our series will focus on the use of babies in advertising. From Etrade to baby powder.
Related articles by Zemanta
- 12 reviews of Those who die as a direct result of cigarette smoking. (rateitall.com)
- Quit Smoking Today (untreatableonline.com)
- Learn to Blow Perfect Smoke Rings (howto.wired.com)
- For Digestion’s Sake, Smoke A Camel Cigarette After Each Thanksgiving Course (dvorak.org)
![Reblog this post [with Zemanta]](http://img.zemanta.com/reblog_b.png?x-id=9a2cc9a8-3a70-48ac-99ff-e2fb20ca3e73)
Short URL: http://man-over-board.com/?p=5955
Posted by 
I’ve seen most of them and I remember the Leave it to Beaver shows too. What a different time.
Have a terrific day. Big hug Glenn.
[...] Babies & Celebs In Commercials Part 1 | Man Over Board Filed under: Weightloss [...]
I’ll have to go visit that website. Yes, I ‘ve seen all of those in my time (I’m as old as you buddy!) That’s a fun bit of nostalgia, well, not the cigarettes…..
Even in my youth, I was enamored by the Marlboro man. I think it’s because my Dad smoked them.
You’re bringing back some pleasant memories for me, Mr. Glenn, since I am as old as dirt and remember these ads. Yeah, the good ol’ days when my Dad smoked Winston’s and rolled the pack up in his short sleeve, and my Aunt Mary, who never wanted to be called “Aunt”, would smoke her Camels, have a bottle of beer in the other hand, and listen to polka music every Saturday afternoon.
[...] Babies & Celebs In Commercials Part 1 | Man Over Board [...]
[...] Babies & Celebs In Commercials Part 1 | Man Over Board [...]
[...] Babies & Celebs In Commercials Part 1 | Man Over Board [...]
Awesome post, very good points. Just being here has improved my knowledge and I am looking forward to it as a very good information hub, I will say there are hundreds of posts to really take a look at. For instance this post and the replies. I must say that I got the most of the information from the replies here. Points were really talking about the experience here. I love to be the part of this forum and gain some good information. Thanks!
I hit the cancer sticks for most of my life and quitting was literally impossible. I bought all of the stop smoking tricks but none helped. Then I found the smokeless cigarette. The e-cigarette. The e-cigarette uses a nicotine juice that contains nothing but nicotine. No toxic substances at all. They have literally improved my life.