The use of physicians in Camel advertisements could not be sustained as the health evidence against cigarettes accumulated.
“The Doctors’ Choice Is America’s Choice”
The Physician in US Cigarette Advertisements, 1930–1953
Martha N. Gardner, PhD and Allan M. Brandt, PhD
In the 1930s and 1940s, smoking
became the norm for both men and women in the United States, and a
majority of physicians smoked. At the same time, there was rising public
anxiety about the health risks of cigarette smoking. One strategic
response of tobacco companies was to devise advertising referring
directly to physicians. As ad campaigns featuring physicians developed
through the early 1950s, tobacco executives used the doctor image to
assure the consumer that their respective brands were safe.
These
advertisements also suggested that the individual physicians’ clinical
judgment should continue to be the arbiter of the harms of cigarette
smoking even as systematic health evidence accumulated. However, by
1954, industry strategists deemed physician images in advertisements no
longer credible in the face of growing public concern about the health
evidence implicating cigarettes.
Source: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1470496/#__sec2title
