2.Give the summary of the text the ultimate promoters

The most successful product promoters^ in American history don't promote as much as they used to. Under penalty of law, the American cigarette industry, which pioneered practically every device now used in product promotion, limits its promotional efforts to magazines, newspapers, and outdoor billboards. The billion dollars or so that cigarette companies spend annually to advertise their products is not small change, but it places the industry in about the middle of all companies in the share of revenue dollars going to advertising. Many might argue that, in the face of scientific and medical evidence linking smoking to a variety of human ailments^, even a dollar spent to sell the product is too much. However, the virtues and vices of cigarette smoking are not an issue here. Our concern is only with how successful the industry has been in promoting its product.

The story begins in 1881 when James Bonsack developed the first suc­cessful cigarette rolling machine. At the time, cigarettes were relatively expen­sive, and 90 percent of tobacco products were sold in the form of plug (chewing) and pipe tobacco and snuff. The cigarette making machine, which greatly reduced production costs, and the rise of Buck Duke's tobacco empire, Amer­ican Tobacco Company, soon changed all that. Duke controlled the cigarette machine and he soon controlled cigarette production. At the same time, using his cigarette profits, he bludgeoned^ the rest of the tobacco industry into sub­mission. By 1900, American Tobacco controlled more than 90 percent of the tobacco market and Duke had begun modest advertising efforts to expand cigarette sales. However, these early promotional efforts were nothing compared to the frenzied^ promotional activity that followed the U.S. Supreme Court's deci­sion in 1911 to break up the American Tobacco monopoly. With competition restored in the tobacco industry and with cigarettes showing considerable profit possibilities, American cigarette makers began a long promotional effort to increase cigarette sales.

Right from the beginning, cigarette makers favored extravagant claims for the benefits of their product. One maker claimed his brand "a sure remedy for catarrh, cold in the head, asthma, all diseases of the throat, hay fever, foul breath, etc." Lucky Strike cigarettes, in making a pitch for the women's market, announced that cigarette smoking curbed appetites. In what was the beginning of a very clever use of suggestive advertising, Lucky Strike advertisements in 1917 profiled two women, one with an attractive tight face smoking a cigarette and the other a nonsmoking woman with a double chin.

The cigarette industry liked short, pointed slogans. Lucky Strike strategy was summed up in, "Reach for a Lucky instead of a sweet." To illustrate brand dedication, R.J. Reynolds used, "I'd walk a mile for a Camel." Using a picture of a Hotel New Yorker page (and later his voice when cigarettes discovered radio), Philip Morris implored, "Call ... for ... Philip Morris." Kool was pushed as, "Guarded against Colds." Much later L & M, the first of the new breed of filters was, "Just what the doctor ordered." Tareyton smokers, "Would rather fight than switch." Virginia Slims, pitched entirely to the female market and bragged, "You've come a long way, baby."

Cigarettes adapted quickly to new advertising media. From newspaper advertisements they moved to magazines and, later, to radio, and television. They carefully developed their image as radio and TV advertisers by selecting programs that could target their cigarette sales. A phenomenally successful radio and TV show of the 1940s and 1950s focused on the top-ten musical hits of the week. Its audience was mostly young people. It was known to practically everyone as the "Lucky Strike Hit Parade."

As image creators, no one has outdone cigarettes. Cigarette smoking was variously depicted as masculine for men (the Marlboro Man remains the most successful advertising image ever created), daring and a bit sexy for women, relaxing for everyone, a sign of sophistication and worldliness^, and, to hook the young, a sign of maturity. In old movies and TV dramas, you could always tell the good guys from the bad guys: The good guys smoked. Now of course, the reverse is true. Incidentally, the fact that the good guys smoked was no accident. Cigarette makers regularly pressured movie and TV producers to write cigarettes into their scripts, perhaps even to leave a certain brand lying about in front of the camera.

Advertising was not the only device for sales promotion. Cigarettes pio­neered the placement of trading coupons on the package, which in sufficient quantities were redeemable^ for other goods. Cigarettes were sold with trading cards and playing cards. And they were given away by the millions. Three decades ago the cigarette salesman was a regular visitor to the college campus, where he passed out four-cigarette packages to anyone who wanted them.

In light of the modern public outcry against cigarette smoking, all this sounds a bit obscene. False claims, image manipulation, and addicting the young sound very bad when we look at the promotional efforts and the product at the same time. However, when we look only at the promotional strategy, it is highly instructive. The fact is, cigarette promotional efforts worked. Within 30 years after the Supreme Court had struck down Duke's monopoly, thereby opening competition in the cigarette industry, almost 60 percent of America's adult population had turned to smoking. Whatever the long-run costs^ of that fact, no one could deny that it was an incredibly successful promotional effort.