Level: Grades 7 to 10
Overview
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In this lesson, students explore how tobacco advertising has evolved over the past sixty years. They begin by discussing advertising techniques used by the tobacco industry; and then they compare ads from the 1940s, '50s, '60s, '70s and '80s, with more recent tobacco advertising. Using online databases of tobacco advertisements, each student will research and prepare an essay on a selected topic, such as the advertising history of one brand, how tobacco advertising has changed over time, gender representation in tobacco ads, and strategies geared to a particular target audiences.
Learning Outcomes
Students will demonstrate:
- an awareness of the strategies used by tobacco advertisers to engage customers
- an understanding of the gap between messages in ads and reality
- an awareness of how advertisers use different strategies to engage specific target groups
- an awareness of how tobacco advertising has changed over the last sixty years
Preparation and Materials
Photocopy the student handouts:
Procedure
Distribute Tricks of the Trade, and review the advertising strategies with students.
Draw the following Venn diagram on the board:
Distribute Cigarette Advertising 1930s, 1940s, 1950s and Cigarette Advertising 1960s, 1970s, 1980s. As students review the ads, assign a note-taker to record the various strategies and methods of persuasion used by tobacco marketers during 1930-1960 and 1960-1990. Once this is done, identify strategies that were used consistently throughout these time periods and list them in the center of the diagram as "shared strategies."
Ask students:
- What are the marketers saying about smoking in each ad?
- How do they make smoking appear to be a desirable activity?
- How do they downplay the negative side effects of smoking?
- Who is the target audience for each ad?
- What methods of persuasion are used?
Distribute Cigarette Advertising 1990s- (or collected ads) to students. Referring to the completed Venn diagram on the board, discuss which traditional advertising strategies for tobacco are still being used today. Ask students to identify trends and strategies in more recent advertisements that differ from those used previously.
Activity
Online Exercise
In this exercise, students will deconstruct tobacco advertisements from collections found on the Internet.
The Richard W. Pollay 20th Century Tobacco Advertising Collection (listed in the sidebar) is an extensive online database of over 8000 tobacco ads. Presented by the Roswell Park Cancer Institute in Buffalo, New York, this catalogue of images can be searched by brand, form of advertising, year, company, and product type.
The Truth in Advertising Gallery (also listed in the sidebar) is a collection of cigarette ads from the 1930s to the 1950s. Included with each ad is a detailed write-up of its "small print."
Advertisements from these Web sites are copyright-cleared for educational use, so students may download and include images in their assignments. (Instruct students on how to properly cite these sources.)
Have students choose one of the following topics for research:
- The advertising history of one brand
- How tobacco advertising has changed over time
- Gender representation in tobacco ads over the past 60 years
- Strategies geared to a particular target audience, such as youth, racial minorities, men or women over the past 60 years
Once students have chosen a topic, they should write an essay that includes:
- A general overview of tobacco advertising strategies relating to their topic
- Sample advertisements
- Deconstruction of selected advertisements, including specific advertising techniques
Evaluation
