Vintage Cigarette Packs, Part 2 - Advertising Ban Political Advertising - collecting cigarette packs

In Part One of this video we looked at dozens of vintage cigarette packs--with interesting graphic design, slogans and brand names. We showed how to find the date of a vintage pack, and.. a good time was had by all! And now on to part two.
The tobacco industry pioneered marketing as we know it today. They basically invented the idea of a customer not just choosing a brand, but personally identifying with that brand, with its look, or image. Customers were encouraged to conflate their own self-perception--with their brand choice. This marketing technique we now call "lifestyle advertising" or "identity advertising." And.. it is everywhere these days. This type of advertising doesn't deal in facts or information, for your use in rational judgment. These ads deal in images and emotions. The goal is not that a consumer should make a rational, informed choice, but rather that a consumer should suspend rationality in favor of a compelling self-image. The product needn't be good, it need only make you FEEL good.. about it.
No image is stronger in the history of image-based advertising than this one, the cowboy and the brand that became the number one brand--in the world-- because of identity advertising. But this brand was not always the macho icon you see here. It was repackaged and relaunched this way in the mid-1950s. Before that, well,.. just to show you the power of consumer manipulation, take a look at what the Marlboro brand was just a few months before its relaunch. Marlboro had been a brand catering to women. No kidding. Right down to having a red tip so the lady's lipstick smudges wouldn't show. Oh it's easy to scoff at the power of marketing and advertising, and think somehow that we are above being susceptible to it. But history shows otherwise. More on this later.
Being made before 1966, this pack has no health warning, though the health effects were well known by then. Did the corporations who made these things deny these health effects and vigorously oppose efforts to regulate their product? Of course they did.
Even though well before 1966 government health agencies knew these things were deadly for people, somehow Congress wouldn't act to do anything about it. The tobacco lobby literally bought off congress. We see this same playbook being used today by the big donors to political campaigns--like the oil companies and weapons manufacturers. It's corruption, duh. But it's business as usual. Remember that in the tobacco states, back in the day, the voters themselves supported that corruption, no matter how many suffered as a result. Just as today people connected to the fossil fuel, and weapons businesses fight any effort to limit their "freedom" to pollute... and to kill. Their financial interests are, to them, just... more important than you.
Yes, politicians sell their influence to their donors to get money. The dirty little secret here that's even worse than the corruption itself is what the politicians DO with that money. Do they spend it all on yachts and airplanes? I wish. What they do with this money is far more insidious than that. What they spend it on is..advertising. Massive amounts of advertising to assure that they will be perpetually re-elected. This advertising, aimed at us, the voters, doesn't serve to "get the word out" about what they are doing for us or what their beliefs and policies are. No, they put out image advertising, engineered to manipulate.
So, this is the game: the politicans sell their influence to their donors to get money. They use that money, in turn, to influence YOU, through advertising, to elect them. And that's how the donors get their favors, the polticians get re-elected, and you, in turn, get... nothing.
In 1970, cigarette ads were banned from radio and television in the United States. The power of image and identity advertising was recognized then for what it is-- psychological trickery too powerful for the public to resist. And so--for the public good--cigarette ads were banned from radio and TV.
For the public good...and for the same reasons, it's time for another advertisng ban. It's time for congress to ban.. political advertising. Would they do it? Would our politicians ban their own advertising? Unlikely.
Well, I've got another idea. Fellow voters,.. we, the people can take money out of politics ourselves right now--in a sense--just by refusing to believe any damned thing at all we hear in a political ad.
Ignoring the ads isn't enough. Don't do that. Instead, hear them, hear what they say.. then do the opposite. When there are competing campaigns, see which one is doing the most advertising, then vote.. for the other side. This technique works for politicans, ballot measures, and propositions.
If this sounds juvenile and contrary to you, remember this:
We're conditioned to believe that paid political advertising is legitimate. It isn't. Money buying political speech is no different than money buying votes.