Cigarette Ads: Where did they come from, Where did they go?
Upon another day sifting through the University Archives and older copies of the Marquette Tribune, I was surprised to see that the strangest and most original advertisements in the paper belonged to the tobacco industry.
Dating back to the earliest issues of the Tribune, advertisements in the newspaper were plentiful, but plain — usually just a simple, small box with a company’s name, location, and tagline. With the exception being the tobacco industry and their decision to go big, adding some character and taking up more space. Lots and lots of space.
Cigarette and tobacco vendors ran half page advertisements in collegiate newspapers all over the country, taking up almost as much space as the actual news stories themselves. I suppose the strategy here is obvious — the bigger the ad, the more people will see it. Which, as seen above, likely held true.
In addition to their vastness, tobacco and cigarette ads pushed the boundaries of just how unorthodox an advertisement could be. More often than not, over-the-top peer pressure was the commonest approach. Companies (baselessly) claimed that their cigarettes were smoked by “everyone” and were much better than “any other.” Another popular method back in the late 30s and 40s was using wartime propaganda to make the products seem part of the “American” cause. Beyond these techniques, all sorts of gimmicks — from comics to national essay contests — were used to make these products stand out from everything else on the page.
In spite of its momentum, the tobacco industry’s run at having the wildest and largest college newspaper ads came to an abrupt halt. Anticipating the expected 1964 release of a U.S Surgeon General report that identified cigarette smoking as a cause of lung cancer and heart disease, the tobacco industry saw the writing on the wall and voluntarily pulled their ads from school newspapers nationwide. I found the last cigarette advertisement in the Marquette Tribune in the May 22, 1963, issue, which matches up perfectly with the timeline just described. In the next issue of the Tribune and for years to come, there would be no more cigarette or tobacco ads.
But what replaced these advertisements that took up so much space in the Tribune? Surely not another industry that sold products that caused long-term damage to one’s health?
Right?
(It was)
When the tobacco industry left a big shoe (ad space) to fill, the alcohol industry responded with, “Hold my beer.” Gaps left by the tobacco industry, and then some, were filled by alcohol ads — particularly for beer. Alcohol ads continued to dominate the Tribune for decades, without any backlash like the one that hit that the tobacco industry in 1964.
The (sorta) good news was that the alcohol industry abandoned the over-the-top messages that appeared in cigarette ads and opted instead for something a little simpler, honest, and actually, adorable. Enter the Hamm’s bear.
Fast forward to today, and you’ll see neither cigarette ads nor beer ads. What happened? For sharing news, print has taken a back seat to the Internet and social media. This has decimated print advertising. If you were to look in the latest issue of the Marquette Tribune, you would find only one or two ads that were not placed by the university — quite the contrast to issues from around 70 years ago that held full-page advertisements from the tobacco industry.
It is strange to think about what the Tribune might look like today if history had followed a different path…
Photos courtesy of Marquette’s University Archives, which can be searched through and found here.
