Vintage Cigarette Ads: Rhetorical Analysis

Vintage cigarette ads have become famous or rather notorious for their popularity and reliance on romantic and luxurious appeal and what is called false logic. While there were suspicions of the negative health effects of tobacco smoking, beginning even before the 1920s, tobacco companies flooded the public with print ads, which did nothing to dampen the popularity of tobacco smoking among the public. 

This false logic could range from advertisements with fictional doctors boasting about the health benefits of tobacco to celebrities like Ronald Reagan being used for an appeal to authority and celebrity status. False logic of this sort is common in copywriting strategies or rhetorical devices used in advertisements. It is not exactly lying, but it manipulates reason and perspective to sell an image. 

A good example is this 1948 print ad by Chesterfield, where Ronald Reagan, a famous actor in that time endorses their cigarette:

The appeal to authority is enhanced by mentioning the name of the famous movie that Regan had starred in — The Voice of the Turtle — as if having a famous star smoke a specific brand of cigarette made that cigarette taste better. 

Cigarette ads used all three rhetorical concepts or approaches in their ads: 1. Logos, 2. Pathos, and 3. Ethos. In this article, we look at a few cigarette ads, and we apply rhetorical analysis to determine how they work in terms of copywriting.

1. Vintage cigarette ads with Romantic appeal 

Let’s begin with this 1933 Lucky Strike cigarette print ad. The main appeal is that of romance, which we can describe as relying on pathos or emotional appeal. For many, it's difficult to square the modern image of the cigarette as smelly and slightly disgusting with its association with romance in these old ads.

But this is exactly the appeal being used by Lucky Strike in this print ad. The ad, like others of the era, rely heavily on a colorful and luxurious illustration, and the image speaks for itself. However, it also relies on subtle literary devices, such as innuendo or double entendre, although this is too classy to be double entendre, which is typically more vulgar. 

The text also makes use of a crucial copywriting principle known as “the Simple 4S Formula."  "Just one more" is a pun or innuendo that mixes up the idea of having one more cigarette with one more kiss or one more round. "It's toasted" refers to the idea of tobacco being dried through artificial heat sources as opposed to being dried in the sun. Allegedly, this process made the tobacco taste more mild and "healthier."

This 1950s Philip Morris ad is no different. Again, the image used in the ad is obvious in its romantic appeal. It's a beautiful man and woman embracing:

However, it is useful to examine how the ad is doing a lot with the word "gentle." It repeats the word three times in the first sentence using anaphora, a rhetorical device that involves repetition in the beginning.

The various meaning of the word is exploited in every way possible:

• Gentle as in refined and classy

• Gentle as in romantic feelings

• Gentle as in friendly and helpful

Vintage cigarette ads do such a good job of associating their brands with refinement and style. This ad manages to do the same to a large extent. But in my opinion, it's a bit too repetitive in that it uses the word gentle too much.

Worse than that, it ends with a whimper: "In the convenient snap-open pack, regular or smart king size." This detail on packaging should have been included in fine print or away from the body of the text.It distracts from the core messaging of the ad.

2. Vintage cigarette ads using humor

This 1922 ad by UK’s Punch magazine is interesting to say the least. It shows an image of a child taking a puff in the name of charity. Obviously, it leans heavily on irony and humor, which means that it can also be classified as appealing to emotion or pathos. Not any humor, but the raunchy type of humor that we are mistaken in believing that folks in the 1920s lacked. Apparently, revenue from the sale of the cigarette goes toward a charity for "blinded soldiers and sailors." 

Little Timmy (that's what we'll call him) believes that smoking a St. Dunstan's is fine because he's contributing to a worthy cause with the caption: 

Every little helps! "Don't be angry Daddy, it's for St. Dunstans!"

"Every little helps" is a pun or play on words. It mixes up the idea that every little donation given to a charitable cause is welcome and useful with Little Timmy's small size. The ad tops it all off by linking a worthy cause with the benefits of its product with the line: "The quality is as excellent as the cause." It's a smart and wickedly funny ad, although no one would dare try it in our era.

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3. Doctor-approved and healthy cigarettes? 

The most notorious ads promoted by vintage cigarette ads involved doctors suggesting that specific brands of cigarettes were healthy for you. These ads featured fictional doctors in illustrations boasting about the superiority health-wise of the brand of cigarettes they were endorsing. 

In hindsight, it almost feels like a form of sarcasm, considering the now widely recognized negative health effects of smoking tobacco. The following 1930 ad is from Lucky Cigarettes showing a doctor in a coat endorsing the health benefits of smoking Lucky cigarettes. The ad relies on both logos and ethos. 

The doctor, fictional though he may be, has the authority of a health professional who knows what he’s talking about. Also, the careful quoting of statistical data from an actual survey also adds more weight to the ad by appealing to logic or logos. The claim that “20,679 physicians say Luckies are less irritating” was based on how doctors answered an arbitrary survey question and couldn’t be described as scientific or rigorous. Nonetheless, it is false logic that works as it associates Lucky Cigarettes with the best choice made by health professionals. 

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Cite this EminentEdit article

Antoine, M. (2025, November 22). Vintage Cigarette Ads: Rhetorical Analysis. EminentEdit. https://www.eminentediting.com/post/vintage-cigarette-ads