Kirk Bouley: Truth in Marketing

I recently received an e-mail that was sent to me just to be funny. It was a compellation of actual advertisements that could be seen in circulation in the early twentieth century. They were advertising all sorts of different things and some of the claims were obviously not true. One article was boasting about the miracle weightless aid “ Tape Worms”; and another claiming that more doctors smoke camel cigarettes than any other brand. Seeing these adds made me wonder what shifted in US advertising ethics because today that sort of thing would just not fly. I looked into it a little and the cigarette companies are the main reason that there is such oversight on US marketing. Before they released how dangerous cigarettes could be to your health, there advertisements even boasted that cigarettes could make you healthy and thin. Now that the Federal Trade Commission oversees advertising there are nowhere near the blatant lies found in the past.

 

~ by raymond2392 on April 23, 2008.