Lucky Strike / 1929
When a cigarette was sold as freedom
1:19 / A short film by Chirag SpeaksWatch on YouTube
A woman lighting a cigarette in public could be making a statement. Edward Bernays saw a commercial opportunity in that statement. This film looks at the Torches of Freedom publicity campaign and the uncomfortable power of connecting a product with an identity people want to claim.
The question to take with you
When a product is offered as a symbol of freedom, who is doing the selling?
A closer look at the history
A publicity event within a much larger social change.
The Library of Congress connects Bernays's work for the American Tobacco Company with portraying cigarettes as symbols of emancipation. It holds his papers and scrapbooks.
One publicity event did not create women's emancipation or change smoking behavior overnight. This is a story about a company exploiting a wider movement, rather than evidence that a brand created that movement.
Read the film transcript
From the published film, with caption spelling corrected. The history notes above provide additional context.
In 1929, women couldn't do this. The roaring 20s saw women vote and drive cars, but light a cigarette in public, that was still a man's act. Restaurants had unspoken rules, street corners had stares, and the act itself whispered the wrong kind of woman. So, this company hired a man who understood that to change behavior, you don't argue with the taboo, you simply remove its power.
Welcome back to the stories they told, how brands have shaped the world, episode six. Lucky Strikes hired Edward Bernays, the nephew of psychologist Sigmund Freud, understood that taboos are opportunities for reframes. Cigarettes symbolized the male authority, and if he could flip that symbol, he could flip the market. So, he tipped off reporters that something monumental was going to happen at New York's Easter parade.
A normal group of women marched in the parade, and at a signal, they pulled out Lucky Strikes and lit them together. Between the camera flashes, Bernays handed the press three words he wanted the world to echo, and newspapers across America were obsessed with the torches of freedom. Within months, women smoking in public became common, and cigarette ads flooded women's magazines. Bernays had cracked the code between buying a product versus joining a movement.
When you link a product to an identity, the sale becomes invisible. People aren't choosing a brand, they're choosing who they want to be. My name is Chirag, the brand historian, and in our next story, we'll uncover how a yellow rectangle convinced the world that memories don't exist without proof.
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