In 1946, the R.J.
Reynolds Tobacco Company released a new advertising campaign for their brand,
Camels. These advertisements, like the one above, claimed that “More doctors
smoke Camels than any other cigarette.” The surveys to support this claim were
apparently “nationwide” surveys of 113,597 doctors. The R.J.
Reynolds Company made a point that their new slogan was a fact backed up by
statistics and wasn't just a marketing claim. Yet, according to the article “‘The
Doctors’ Choice is America’s Choice’: The Physician in US Cigarette
Advertisements, 1930-1953,” the statistics presented in these ads were not as “independent”
as they claimed to be.
According to the article, the
surveys had been conducted by the R.J Reynolds Company themselves, not some
independent organization. Furthermore, “It appears that most doctors were
surveyed about their cigarette brand of choice just after being provided
complimentary cartons of Camels.” The whole process was questionable at best,
and this bribery alone would have some questioning the morality of this kind of marketing move. Had this technique of manipulating the credibility of doctors been used for any other product (and it has been, just look at most medicine commercials) it could be ignored as an unfortunate
yet harmless lie told to America’s consumers. The fact that R.J Reynolds was
using this technique to lie about the harmfulness of cigarettes makes this case much
worse.
Through their advertisements, R.J.
Reynolds was able to spread a lie that cigarettes were harmless. If they
were bad for you, why would a doctor smoke them? Worse still, R.J. Reynolds
wasn’t alone in using this technique. According to the New York Times article “When
Doctors, and Even Santa, Endorsed Tobacco,” Pall Mall had Santa Claus in their advertisements
smoking one of their products and Marlboro’s ads even featured a baby jealous of his father's cigarettes.
The statements in these advertisements
blatantly misled the consumers, claiming that their products were harmless.
The statistics used were fraudulent and many entire slogans were complete lies.
Though the tobacco companies were stopped decades later when consumers discovered
the truth, companies are still misleading the public with their advertising to
this day.
Works Cited
“‘The Doctors’ Choice is America’s Choice’: The Physician in US Cigarette Advertisements, 1930-1953” http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1470496/
“When Doctors, and Even Santa, Endorsed Tobacco”
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/07/business/media/07adco.html?_r=0
Hi Will, I'll start off this response with some suggestions for the writing. Grammar wise, there were only a few mistakes, in your third line, I would replace "wasn't just a marketing claim" with "not just a market claim." In your second paragraph your fourth sentence could flow better if you replaced "it could be ignored" with "could have been ignored" to keep the same tense as the first part of your sentence. Some things that are not wrong, but that I would personally change are:
ReplyDelete"made a point" to maybe "stressed", this and the previous adjustment would change your sentence to "The R.J. Reynolds Company stressed that their new slogan was a fact backed up by statistics and not just a marketing claim." Next, when you quoted your article, you changed the tense that you were using in your previous sentence to stay true to the exact quote, which is good. However, I think there is a way of quoting using brackets [ ] too keep the same tense. Finally in the third sentence of your second paragraph, you use the word questionable/questioning twice, which was something I was also taught not to do.
Now that we got that out of the way, I'll comment on the actually content of your post. I personally found this topic pretty interesting. My dad, who was coincidentally born in 1946, always told me about these kinds of commercials he saw on TV featuring doctors advocating for cigarettes. The one thing I wondered about was to what extent RJ Reynolds, and even doctors knew about the harmfulness of cigarettes back in the 40s? Perhaps their "blatant misleading" of consumers was unintentional? I'm not really well versed on this topic, so I could be wrong, but it is something to consider I guess.
Overall great post, well written and interesting. Good job
Will, not knowing how this is going to relate to your research paper thesis, I have a hard time offering a critique. The ad is quite provocative - and troubling. Unfortunately, I don't know what I'm supposed to take away from it, other than the fairly well-known fact that marketers "blatantly mis[lead] the consumers."
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