In 1928, Bernays began working for George Hill, head of the American Tobacco Company, which made America’s fastest-growing brand of cigarettes, Lucky Strikes. Hill was obsessed by the prospect of winning over the large potential female market for Luckies. “It will be like opening a new gold mine right in our front yard.”

Bernays had become the acknowledged master of accentuating trends and capitalizing on them for his clients, a process he termed “crystallizing public opinion.” And during his eight-year association with the tobacco tycoon, he would make clear his willingness to employ whatever  antics or deceptions it took to do that crystallizing, including trying to discredit new research linking smoking to deadly diseases.

Women and Tobacco

Social changes brought on by World War, for many women cigarettes had become a symbol of liberation. Women who’d replaced men in factories or served abroad had taken up the habit, defying the taboo against female smoking, and college coeds were trying to tear down barriers against women smoking in public places. The share of cigarettes consumed by women more than doubled from 1923 to 1929, but it was still just 12 percent.

The quickest way to rally more women to his cause, the tobacco man believed, was to zero in on their waistlines. His theory was simple: slimness was coming into vogue, and cigarettes could be sold to the public, especially women, as a fat-free way to satisfy their hunger.

Bernays furnished magazines and newspapers with the latest findings on the get-thin trend. For fashion editors, that meant photo after photo of slender Parisian models in haute couture dresses. For news editors, it meant testimonials of medical officers warning that sweets caused tooth decay and advising that “the correct way to finish a meal is with fruit, coffee, and a cigarette.” Hotels were urged to add cigarettes to their dessert lists.

Bernays urged homemakers to demand kitchen cabinetmakers to provide special places to hold cigarettes the same way as they did for flour and sugar. He urged container makers to provide labeled tins for smokes just as they did for tea and coffee, and encouraged home economics writers to “stress the importance of cigarettes in home-making. Just as the young and inexperienced housewife is cautioned not to let her supplies of sugar or salt or tea or coffee run low, so she should be advised that the same holds true of cigarettes.”

Never had a publicity campaign been carried out on so many fronts. A month after the first campaign to attract women smokers, a second campaign was ordered, this time stressing moderation. The “moderation”, or course, meant consuming fewer sweets and more cigarettes.

Torches of Freedom Parade

The Torches of Freedom campaign remains a classic in the world of public relations, one still cited in classrooms and boardrooms as a brilliant creative analysis of social symbols and how they can be manipulated. For starters, he concealed the fact that American Tobacco was behind his initiatives. Discerning readers might have suspected that a commercial interest had prompted the campaign, but it would have taken a detective to pinpoint the company.

College coeds were trying to tear down barriers against women smoking in public places. So, why not organize a parade of prominent women lighting their “torches of freedom”? And do it on Easter Sunday, a holiday symbolizing freedom of spirit, on Fifth Avenue, America’s most prestigious promenade?

The dispatch explained, “We are doing this to combat the silly prejudice that the cigarette is suitable for the home, the restaurant, the taxicab, the theater lobby but never, no, never for the sidewalk. Women smokers and their escorts will stroll on Fifth Avenue between Eleven-Thirty and One O’clock.”

Ten young women turned out, marching down Fifth Avenue with their lighted “torches of freedom,” and the newspapers loved it. Two-column pictures showed elegant ladies, with floppy hats and fur-trimmed coats, cigarettes held self-consciously by their sides, as they paraded down the wide boulevard. Dispatches ran the next day, on page one, in papers from Fremont, Nebraska, to Portland, Oregon, to Albuquerque, New Mexico. Miss Hunt issued the following communiqué from the smoke-clouded battlefield: “I hope that we have started something and that these torches of freedom, with no particular brand favored, will smash the discriminatory taboo on cigarettes for women and that our sex will go on breaking down all discriminations.”

The actual march went off more smoothly than even its scriptwriters imagined. The outcome was one that publicity men can only dream about: an irresistible script for a stunt, flawlessly executed, covered in nearly every paper in America, with no one detecting the fingerprints of either Bernays or his tobacco company client.