A 1927 Celebrity Endorsement

by Thomas F. Schwartz

A common technique used by advertisers engages the services of celebrities to endorse and promote their product. Current ethics laws prevent elected official from product endorsements. Such prohibitions did not exist for earlier generations of elected or appointed officials. A previous blog post indicated that Herbert Hoover was frequently approached as a former president to promote products. He declined all such offers except for one explained here: https://hoover.blogs.archives.gov/2018/09/19/whos-buried-in-grants-tomb/

Hoover's Vice President, Charles Curtis, appeared in an ad for Lucky Strike Cigarettes in 1927, before he was selected to run on the ticket with Hoover in the 1928 presidential election. Curtis was the first Vice President with Native American ancestry being one-eighth Kaw, one-eighth Pottawattamie and one-eighth Osage. Political opponents made frequent disparaging references to his mixed-race background. His continued success rising in the political ranks showed that voters were not dissuaded by the negative rhetoric. He was elected to the United States Senate in 1904 and became Senate Majority Leader in 1924. It was in this capacity that he is shown along with a package of Lucky Strikes with the following endorsement: "Lucky Strikes do not affect the voice. I notice that most of my colleagues in the Senate now use them. They do so, not only because they know that they are kind to the throat, but also because they give the greatest enjoyment." What is left unsaid is that Curtis was not himself a smoker.

The ad goes to declare "'It's Toasted' Your Throat Protection." The phrase, "It's Toasted," was used by the company as early as 1917. This provided a contrast to Camel cigarettes that sun-dried their tobacco. The phrase "It's Toasted" was later fictionalized for television. An episode of Mad Men, "Up in Smoke," portrays the leading character, Don Draper, puzzled about how to promote Lucky Strike cigarettes in light of the Surgeon General's 1964 report indicating the link between smoking and lung cancer. The tobacco company is the largest source of income for his ad agency, Cooper-Sterling. Draper goes into the meeting with the corporate heads of Lucky Strike without any presentation ideas. Ad-libbing, he asks the owners how the cigarettes are made. The elder head of the company describes how the tobacco is grown, harvested, then toasted. Before he could continue, Don Draper writes on large white paper, "It's toasted." The owner's son with a puzzled expression shouts "But everybody's tobacco is toasted." Don Draper replied, "No, everybody else's tobacco is poisonous. Lucky Strike. It's toasted."

Another connection to Hoover as head of the United States Food Administration was the Lucky Strike print ad campaign of 1918 promoting "Hooverizing" or the elimination or substitution of certain foods required for the war effort: wheat, sugar, meat, fat. One magazine ad, for example, encourages Americans to eat "more vegetables and less meat." The ad explains how vegetables cooked in butter can be a substitute for meat. "How the cooking brings out their flavor! Cooking helps everything. Just try Lucky Strike Cigarette-it's toasted." Clearly, these early ads implied a health benefit to toasting.