Abstract

"Philip Morris, Alpine, and DDB: The Advent of the “Creative Revolution” in Cigarette Advertising"

Kovacs Peter, University of California, San Francisco (kovacspeter@utexas.edu)

In 1959, at the height of the infamous "Tar Derby," where tobacco companies desperately tried to outdo each other at marketing "healthier" cigarettes, Philip Morris launched a low-low-tar brand called Alpine. What differentiated the new product from its competition was a touch of menthol. Health-conscious smokers driven to reduced tar cigarettes often complained of inhaling hot air. Alpine was built on the premise that the added flavor would mask the absence of traditional tobacco taste--an unwelcome characteristic of low-tar and especially low-low-tar cigarettes.
In addition to creating a new market sub-segment overnight, Alpine's introductory campaign by Doyle Dane Bernbach (DDB), the agency cultural historians tend to credit with revolutionizing the advertising industry in the 1960s, was also groundbreaking. The copy platform--Alpine as a "dual-purpose" cigarette that combines "refreshing taste" with "the comfort of high-filtration"--was put across with irreverence and self-reflexivity that was as shocking as DDB's more famous "Think Small" campaign for Volkswagen.
By revisiting this forgotten gem of advertising history, this paper looks at the integration of parody--one of the key elements of the creative revolution--into tobacco marketing. I contrast Alpine's strategy with the prevailing modus operandi of the contemporary cigarette industry; identify the tropes of DDB's philosophy in selected print and television advertisements, highlighting the agency's penchant for poking fun of traditional reason-why advertising; and assess the lasting legacy of the introductory campaign. Despite the endeavor's apparent failure--Alpine got off to a disappointing start and Philip Morris moved the account to one of the more "old-school" agencies, Leo Burnett--cigarette manufacturers took notice. Soon, self-deprecating humor in cigarette advertising became so widespread that anti-smoking forces accused the tobacco oligopoly of using it to deflect smokers’ health fears.