How Freud’s nephew tricked women into smoking and wearing the ugliest color
My grandpas and uncles often talk about how millionaires and billionaires (now even trillionaires) are greedy and “evil”.
And of course, also how marketers and advertisers are tricking people into buying useless -- even harmful -- products.
Most of the time that’s just old-man-yelling-at-a-could nonsense.
But sometimes….sometimes they’re right.
In fact, one of the most famous 20th century marketing campaigns was “for evil”. For a product most health-aware people now avoid.
Cigarettes.
Everyone was smoking back in the 1920s and 1930s. Men came back from the war, they were getting free cigarettes and got hooked.
Consumption kept growing.
Then Lucky Strike went to Edward Bernays -- nephew of Sigmund Freud and uncle of Marc Randolph (Netflix founder) -- who is often called “the godfather of propaganda” and “father of public relations”.
They asked him to help them sell more of their cigarettes, since he was one of the best in the industry.
But Bernays is like: “You’ve already got all the men, they’re all smoking.”
And that was true, all the men were smoking, the market was saturated. The women weren’t.
But the thing is, at the time it was not acceptable for women to smoke.
Sure, there were rich women who could afford to have private smoking rooms in their homes, but they barely made any dent in the market.
So Bernays realized the best play here, and told the Lucky Strike executives: “We gotta get the women smoking”.
And let’s face it, they probably weren’t happy with his idea.
They were probably saying things like: “Are you nuts? That’s forbidden!”
Or: “Are you high Eddie? Women don’t even like smoking!”
All of which was true.
Women smoking was taboo and socially policed.
And women were not pushing against it because smoking was considered un-ladylike. Not feminine.
It was a man thing.
An ordinary marketer would have seen the writing on the wall and said “Oh well, it’s borderline illegal and they don’t even want it. I’ll go back to working on campaigns that will actually make me money”.
But not Eddie.
Eddie was a master marketer who knew how to bend the public opinion to his will.
He knew he had to make smoking cool for women.
And how do things become cool? When celebrities start doing them.
Today if you want to go mega viral (and you have the budget), your best bet would be to hire Sydney Sweeney, Kim Kardashian, Kylie Jenner and Taylor Swift to promote your products during the SuperBowl, the Oscars or whatever.
And that’s exactly what Bernays did.
He also capitalized on the Women’s Rights movement. Because that was also the time women were protesting in the streets for equal rights, opportunities and freedoms.
So he hired the famous celebrities of the day and organized a float for the Easter Day parade that went down Fifth Avenue, which was the big social event back then.
And right when their float was coming around the corner where all the reporters were, he told them to pull out the cigarettes from their stockings and light them up.
Reporters were flabbergasted. Like what the hell is going on?!?!
It was an obscene sight. Women. Smoking. In public.
At that exact moment, while everyone was still confused, Bernays delivered the final blow.
He was among the reporters with his crew and they were saying to the reporters:
“Oh they’re not smoking. They’re declaring their rights with these torches of freedom.”
The torches of freedom that represent their equality with men and that they can smoke too.
The reporters ate it up like a chocolate birthday cake and it turned into a movement.
It became cool for women to smoke, sales went through the roof and the industry doubled its total addressable market.
All with a few masterstrokes from Edward Bernays.
The big surprise
You thought that’s where the story ends, didn’t you?
Not quite.
See, Bernays got women to smoke, but the Lucky Strike executives weren’t happy.
“What the hell Eddie? All these women are smoking now, but none of them are buying our cigarettes.”
The reason?
Lucky Strikes were green back then, and green was considered an undesirable color. Basically the ugliest color.
The easy move would’ve been to change the color of the packaging.
But Bernays doesn’t play easy amateur games. He wants a challenge.
So he decides to make the color green cool.
And how does he do it?
Basically the same thing again. He got all the hottest celebrities of the day and organized a green gala ball at the Waldorf Hotel in New York where everyone was wearing green.
The celebrities liked it because they were thinking “I’m cool enough that I can wear green and still look good”. And ordinary people always copy what celebrities are doing.
And voila.
Green went from ugliest to most desirable color within a year. Lucky Strike became the best-selling cigarette brand in the US, without even trying, because women subconsciously wanted that green box.
So yes, sometimes my grandpas and uncles are right -- advertising is also used for evil.
We could even call Edward Bernays an evil genius.
But I’ll give him the benefit of the doubt. He probably didn’t know how harmful smoking was back then.
Either way, he was a master of marketing and propaganda, and we give credit where credit is due.