This is a question for you. If you got the job of advertising cigarettes and you got a rather big budget along with it, how would you do it?

You probably know that cigarettes are bad for the health. I am not sure how they taste, but the smell is pretty bad. Not sure if there are any benefits at all from smoking, at least there are none that I can think of at the moment… well, maybe except for meeting new people when you are outside somewhere smoking. Smokers tend to stand next to each other while smoking, and this way smokers might meet more people than non-smokers.

My point is really this; when you got a product that everybody knows are almost all bad, how would you advertise it?

I think that what tobacco companies have done for many years, placing models and successful people in ads with a cigarette in their hand / mouth have worked wonders. One thing is for sure, and that`s that they shouldn`t focus on health or the taste / smell, they should probably not focus on the cigarette at all.

And this is how tobacco companies have been marketing cigarettes for a long time.

For instance, actor Sylvester Stallone agreed to use Brown and Williamson tobacco products in no less than five feature films for a fee of $500 000 in 1983. Are Hollywood stars really encouraging kids to start smoking?

This is probably the best way to advertise it and the only marketing technique that really works.

Yes, the best way to advertise cigarettes is not to focus on the cigarette at all. Just put the cigarettes in ads and movies as a natural “ingredient”, so that it seems that smoking is what all cool people do. This way they are really advertising cigarettes without really advertising it… at least they are not focusing on it.

But how would you do it and would you do it?