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Comment by aithrowawaycomm | Hacker News Reader

It is interesting that these ads are particularly targeted at women - maybe I am looking too much in to it, but I would guess there was (is) a big gender disparity with tobacco health concerns. These ads are quite different from the Marlboro Man - "tough cigarettes for tough men."

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Marlboro was originally marketed to women under the slogan "Mild as May", before being repositioned as a cigarette for men in the 1950s.

https://tobacco.stanford.edu/cigarettes/light-super-ultra-li...

One potential reason might be because these ads were in women’s magazines? I’m sure they advertised in men’s magazines as well. It would be interesting to compare.

My understanding of this Stanford research group collection is that it is all the ads (or all they are able to find) - I don't think they were only collecting ads from women's magazines.

If this ad campaign was mostly run in women's magazines, that supports the same hypothesis - presumably camel was running a different message to advertise toward men.

But I'm not actually able to tell from the pictures which magazine the ad ran in - am I missing that somewhere?

Yeah the magazine name (and target) would be essential context that should be preserved along with the images themselves.

You may want to search "Torches of Freedom" and go down that rabbit hole.

The only reason you don't see "Torches of Freedom" now is because PR has become infinitely more sophisticated. To the extent that you create your own Torches of Freedom by your own volition.

Great point. I had a conversation with my sister on this topic recently. Maybe women are realising.

I think it's because so many men smoked that marketing to women was a growth opportunity.

Advertisements in general are usually targeted to women, still today. They spend more and make the spending decisions if they have a husband.

> 85% of all consumer purchases in the U.S. are made by women.

https://www.mccormickfona.com/articles/2014/12/purchasing-po...

I couldn't find a great source on the 85% number--it looks like the site seems to cite a Boston Consulting Group study that's recapped in this Harvard Business Review article: https://hbr.org/2009/09/the-female-economy. Looking at the consumer spending chart ~50% through the article, it says women account for 4.3/5.9 trillion $ of spending in the US, which is 73%--still high!

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