Today’s post comes to us courtesy of Danny, who runs the hilarious blog Strictly Commercials. If you haven’t checked it out, do so! Additionally, enjoy the bizarre sexual innuendos that follow!
Newport cigarettes were named after the Rhode Island town where company president Louis L. Lorillard had his summer home. This gives some context to why, like the Beastie Boys, the characters in Newport ads seem to be always on vacation.
As a child, I was very confused by Newport advertisements. I grew up in Virgina, the world headquarters of the Phillip Morris corporation, so ads for Marlboros* were pretty frequent sights along the highway between Richmond and D.C.. These ads all had the same format of cowboys in red shirts riding and roping in near silhouette. The ads were really stupid, with their attempts to connect the pioneer spirit and the memory of John Wayne with the product that killed him. But I was used to seeing the format, so they were the archetype for what I thought all cigarette ads looked like.
Newport ads therefore didn’t make any sense to my grade school self. They showed people goofing around having a good time, instead of punching cows in the face. How was this supposed to sell cigarettes? I was too young to understand that they were not just showing a group of people hanging out, but instead took place minutes before an orgy commenced.
Newport ads from 1975 and 2002. Newport: Celebrating over 30 years of photos of people who look like they are about to get laid.
You could chalk the campaign up to the old adage that sex sells, but Newport’s marketers were not content to sell their cigarettes with mere innuendo. For the majority of their ads, they wanted to make clear specifically what kind of sexual acts you can expect if you smoke Newports.
Those acts are blow jobs. Blow jobs everywhere.
Blow jobs by the lake:
Blow jobs that jizz candy:
Blow jobs while hosing down your wife:
And for some reason Newport also thinks you will find appealing the promise of you and your panting girlfriend both getting to anally fist a pumpkin:
Spy Magazine did an article in August of 1988 about these ads in which they showed them to some prominent feminists of the era. Gloria Steinem, amazingly, looked at all the above ads and did not see anything misogynistic about them, though this may have been the phase of her career that was not focused on the cause of feminism, but instead involved her crusading for pedal powered transportation to be available to chordates.**
Beyond the ridiculously blatant sex act metaphors, another layer of mystery to these ads is why they work so hard to imply the physical act, while the style of the photos is strangely un-sexy. They have the implications of subservient women pleasing their man, but without any sensuality or eroticism. The folks involved look playful, but not in a seductive way, and they are photographed like a catalog from Sears instead of one from Victoria’s Secret.
Perhaps filling these ads with sexual imagery but shooting them in such a bland, wholesome way was a good way for Newport to get away with including so many jizz metaphors. The same way R.J. Reynolds was able to keep using Joe Camel as their mascot for years despite protests that the cartoon camel was clearly aimed at kids,*** since no one could prove that the ads weren’t just aimed at adults who really liked cartoon camels. I mean seriously, what would make people think ads such as this were directed at kids:
Despite the undertones of Newport’s campaign,I suppose we can be thankful that Tareyton Cigarette’s “rather fight than switch” ad campaign was ended in 1981:
This campaign began in 1963, so it only took Tareyton 18 years to decide that maybe a campaign about punching women in the face wasn’t such a hot idea.
Footnote(s):
*I don’t think I had ever realized until just now when I spellchecked it that Marlboro has an L in its name.
** That was the most convoluted joke in this post I promise.
***They only dropped Joe Camel once internal memos from the 80’s were leaked to the press. These memos discussed the success of a camel mascot adopted by a french tobacco company in encouraging smoking in children as young as 14. Read more about this in this 1998 Washington Post article. I am sorry this footnote was so serious and informative. Here is a photo to lighten the mood:
It's Not That Weird 