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- Title
'People Love Player's': Cigarette Advertising and the Teenage Consumer in Post-war Britain.
- Authors
O'Neill, Daniel
- Abstract
This article explores the background, creation and reception of a prominent cigarette advertising campaign from the early 1960s. The advertisements featured young couples falling in love as they shared Player's Medium cigarettes together. As such, the advertisements reflected the central place of the teenager within post-war British consumer culture. The campaign was built upon the insights of market research, particularly that carried out by Mark Abrams and his research organization Research Services Limited. Historians have played down the significance of Abrams's work, but it is argued here that the studies and reports Abrams produced rendered the teenage consumer knowable in a powerful way. Advertisers and manufacturers now had detailed knowledge about young people's consumption habits and their motivations. Such research helped the British tobacco industry formulate a controversial marketing strategy--the need to 'recruit' young people to the smoking habit--and the People Love Player's campaign was created with this in mind. The representations of love and gender included in the advertisements gave the campaign an emotional pull which was designed to resonate with young people. The advertisements were widely criticized and this drove the British tobacco industry to remove from its advertising appeals which might influence the young, such as love.
- Subjects
UNITED Kingdom; CIGARETTE advertising; TEENAGE consumers; ADVERTISING campaigns; ABRAMS, Mark; MARKETING strategy; TOBACCO industry
- Publication
Twentieth Century British History, 2017, Vol 28, Issue 3, p414
- ISSN
0955-2359
- Publication type
Article
- DOI
10.1093/tcbh/hwx015