The Last Gasp: Cigarette Advertising on Billboards in the 1990s

Facing further censorship on advertising, cigarette companies exploited the billboard in the 1990s. Billboards pose problems of communication because of the short time for perception. All the companies founded their ads on the myth of freedom. Winston used purely verbal presentations, creating a persona that proclaimed its cigarettes free of additives and that talked back to big government. Merit used visual signifiers of color and clothing and dawn light to connote pleasure and freedom. Joe Camel was the epitome of “attitude,” an urban expression of personal freedom. The cartoon form also served to deny subordination to the iconic form of photography. Marlboro began a decade-long deconstruction of the billboard frame, thus enacting rather than merely professing the idea of freedom.