Shadows Lengthen

The always interesting and sometimes startling question of what Mr. George Washington Hill and his American Tobacco Co. are likely to do next was last week answered when Lucky Strike's ''future shadow." suddenly expanded from the chin in which it originated and spread over the entire figure, monstrous, ominous, and exaggerated even to advertising's nth degree. For a long time the public had been accustomed to seeing, in Lucky, advertisements, a picture of a single-chinned man or woman casting a fat and double-chinned shadow, the moral being that by much smoking instead of much eating one . . . is also Hill's, would "avoid that future shadow." Last week, however, an entire figure--a golfer --was pictured; and an entire shadow-- the same golfer, apparently afflicted with overall elephantiasis--pointed the appalling moral.* Meanwhile, in England, precisely the same technique was being employed in the advertising of Kensitas cigarets. Here was pictured a slender and attractive girl, casting the shadow of a not only multichinned but also more than amply-bosomed matron. Like Lucky copy, Kensitas copy used the "avoid that future shadow' slogan. No plagiarism was involved, however, as Kensitas is made by J. Wix & Son. Ltd.. an American Tobacco Co. subsidiary!

Internationally-minded advertising men pondered the matter of how England would respond to the somewhat radical Kensitas campaign and how large would be the future shadow representing Kensitas sale's figure. They recalled that Mr. Hill had made a strenuous attempt to sell, in his unique manner, Wix & Son's Wix cigaret, that this attempt had been a failure. The blame, however, was placed on the product rather than the advertising: England is used to a tightly rolled cigaret and Wix was of the loose-rolled U. S. variety. Taking no chances, he picked for his second attempt to make a "Lucky Strike of England," the Kensitas, a long-established cigaret better adapted to the English taste. And he sent to Britain to run Kensitas his own famed Advertising Vice President, Arthur C. Mowrer. Mr. Mowrer last week married, in the Savoy Chapel, Mrs. Dorothy Clare, whom London despatches described as "also an American."

Most of the cigarets sold in England (about 75%) are made by Sir George Alfred Willis's Imperial Tobacco Co. of Great Britain and Ireland, Ltd., which for 12 months ending Oct. 31, 1929. showed a net income of -L-9,476,000 ($46,053,000) compared to about $30,000,000 1929 net for American Tobacco. The British-American Tobacco Co., Ltd., formed in 1902 by American Tobacco and Imperial Tobacco (the American interest has scattered since the dissolution of the old American Tobacco Trust; Imperial has probably much increased its original one-third interest), is not directly affected since, in spite of its name, it sells neither in England nor America but in foreign, especially Asiatic and South American parts.

* Running concurrently with the Lucky-golfer advertisement, a Chesterfield advertisement pictured a grand & glorious battleship, described Chesterfield as "our Navy's" choice. Pointed by the fact that New York was then entertaining the U. S. battle fleet, the Liggett & Myers Co. advertisement represented attention value in a more conservative form.

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