Cigarette Marketing and Smoking Culture in 1930s Canada

Type of resource
Author/collaborator
Title
Cigarette Marketing and Smoking Culture in 1930s Canada
Abstract
The author examines the political-economic, cultural, and marketing changes during the 1930s that solidified the domestic tobacco industry and cigarette smoking as a socially normative practice. During this decade, farm production of cigarette tobacco grew exponentially in southern Ontario, as did cigarette manufacturing operations, mostly in Montreal. The author points out that cigarette marketing and advertising were prolific in this decade, as evidenced by the bevy of premium promotions, gift rebates, sports sponsorships, and athlete and celebrity testimonial advertising. Women, for the first time, were routinely targeted by cigarette advertising, and their entry into the ranks of “legitimate” smokers proved a watershed for tobacco manufacturers. The author explains that two specific developments further boosted the long-term viability of the cigarette industry. First, Canada’s dominant tobacco firm, the Montreal-based Imperial Tobacco, spent heavily on public relations advertising to overcome public criticism of its cut-throat merchandising practices. Second, menthol and filtered cigarettes first appeared in the 1930s, ads for which reassured smokers worried about sore throats and persistent coughs. The author argues that long before the tobacco industry’s massive public relations response in the 1950s to the “cancer scare” (which included the heavy promotion of filtered brands as “safer” cigarettes), Imperial Tobacco, among others, was versed in issue-management public relations and forms of cigarette “health marketing.”
Publication
Journal of the Canadian Historical Association/Revue de la Société historique du Canada
Volume
Vol. 25
Issue
no. 1
Pages
63-105
Date
2014
Language
en
URL
Citation
Robinson, Daniel J. “Cigarette Marketing and Smoking Culture in 1930s Canada.” Journal of the Canadian Historical Association/Revue de la Société historique du Canada Vol. 25, no. 1 (2014): 63–105. https://www.erudit.org/en/journals/jcha/2014-v25-n1-jcha02048/1032799ar.pdf.
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