The Old Soft Shoe for the Old Hard Sell

by Wyatt Newman

The tobacco industry has always had enough funds in their advertising budget to hire the best, most creative Madison Avenue pitchmen. Tobacco ads on TV always fascinated me with their creative messages. That's undoubtedly why Congress, in the 1970s, finally said, "They gone far enough. That's it!" and banned cig sales pitches from TV, knowing that people wouldn't smoke unless they were induced to by catchy themes and messages.

What sells anything better than sex? It's used in blatant or subtle forms to sell everything from cars to after shave lotions. I don't know who made Old Gold cigarettes, but one ad that appeared on TV during the Herb Shriner Show of the early 50s is stuck in my nostalgic memory bank: the dancing pack of Old Gold cigarettes. They didn't use cartoon figures of a dancing pack, but really good-looking gams. One could only imagine what other beauty features were hidden of the dancer inside the pack of Old Golds. It was an old soft shoe two-step. I doubt such an ad would be effective today. America has become more sophisticated, thinking a dancing pack of cigarettes too silly if not downright stupid. In this computer age, we expect creative animation, finding that more fascinating technical wizardry than what real people can do.

The Old Gold pitch made by the host of the show, Dennis James, sent a message that was directed to make people not worry about smoking, to go ahead, light up, enjoy it and forget about the health stuff, the "coffin nails" syndrome. Dennis would tell viewers, boldly and in his manly baritone, "We're tobacco men, not medicine men." MEN! They were the target of the ads. The pitch was to men who enjoyed watching a nice pair of feminine legs attached to the fantasy female inside the box and to be a real man and go ahead and smoke.

What a different era that was from today. Many things of the past we remember with fondness and regrets that they are of the past, the "good old days" nostalgia pull. But cigarettes, as entertaining as ads for such could be, it's doggone good that they no longer can be sold by ads that induce people to smoke the unhealthy weed. Maybe the future will bring us to the final step when tobacco will be nothing but a memory. The day will arrive, I predict, when the "medicine men will totally defeat the "tobacco men".