y survey of feminist reactions to Newport cigarette ads was probably not very scientific, and the
An
sample audience was rather small- two - but the results are
Advertising Case
neverrheless significant: fully 50 percent of those queried consider Newporr's adverrising campaign
Study
outstandingly twisted... First I delivered a batch of the Newport ads to Gloria Steinem. When I suggested that cerrain dark mis-
, , ogynisric themes turned up again and again in the ads, Steinem looked blank. Then I sem a set [Q Betty Friedan. She caUed the nen day with her own evalu-
"ion. _""" ,d,; F,i,d'n
BY J0HNLEO
said, are absolutely perverse.~ .~ There you go. ~ With Newport ads, either you see it right away or you don't. And we're not talking subliminal seduction, genitalia in ice 106 SPY AUGUST 1988
cubes or anything nutty like chat. We're calking sell:.
ual combat disguised as play.... The advertise. mems, which began appearing in the mid-1970s, have become onc of the most ambitious (more than $80 million spent on magazine advertising alont during the last decade) and successful cigarette campaigns in recent history. The early ads featured almost amateurish photos of people sitting arOund smoking and laughing. The cigarettes eventually disappeared from the ads, rhe photography im· proved dramaticaUy and the pictures began to show vigorous baby-boomers engaged in ourdoorsy she· nanigans-all wirh a trademark undercurrent of sexual tension. Newport sales started rising t5 to 25 percent annually. (They increased by $170 million from 1975 ro 1979 alone.) In fact, rhe campaign helped turn around the foundering corporate for· tunes of Loriliard, the tobacco company thar make! Newport and which is owned by CBS presidem Laurence Tisch and his brother Preston . ./." Why are the ads so successful? Postfeminist resentment. About half the photos depict women who seem to be off-baJance and menaced, or at [east the target ofber' serk male energy. A man stands in the middle of a swimming pool, spinning a fully dressed woman around on his shoulders. A woman sits inside a large bell, her hands to her ears; her boyfriend, who is laughing, has apparently JUSt rung the bell. .c:, In Newport's sexual wars, men get pushed around, too. During a miniature-golfgame, a giggling woman tees up her ball on the mouth of a supine male. For some reason, the Lorillard people seem intensely interested in mock fellatio. Newport women tend to suck on icicles, drink from hoses whenever they can and open their mouths as tiny white snowflakes, water spray or feathers from pillow fights drift their way. 2; How does Lorillard get away with retailing sexual animosity? Part of the trouble is that anyone who claims (Q see cryptic sexual messages in ads is apt to be relegated to the Frederic WerthamWilson Bryan Key lunacy fringe. Wenham, you will remember, was the fellow who kept seeing sexual parts turn up in comic books, including [riangles of pubic hair slyly hidden in Tarzan's shoulder. Wilson Key detected the word lex faintly imprinted almost everywhere in the magazine world, from Ritz crackers ads to a Time cover on Vietnam. The Newport campaign is nothing that loony or complicated. q One of the people who used to shoot the ads for Lorillard isJoel Meyerowitz, the reputable fine-art photographer. When contacted about the Newport photographs, he seemed more embarrassed about being caughr doing commercial work than about being tagged as the perpetrator of softcore sex and violence. Like the brand manager and art director of the campaign, who were also contacted, Meyerowiu implied that the campaign had been intended solely to depict rollicking, wholeSure_ ..... some activities of fun-loving couples.
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