Winston tastes good like a cigarette should
Winston tastes good like a cigarette should ("Winston tastes good as a cigarette [it] should") is an advertising slogan that the American cigarette brand Winston used to advertise its product from its launch in 1954 to 1972.
In the USA, the sentence is still one of the most famous advertising slogans in history, and the industry journal Advertising Age named it the eighth best jingle of all time. In 1988 the quotation manac Simpson's Contemporary Quotations added it to its collection of contemporary quotations. Furthermore, the advertising slogan is probably one of the most famous grammatically incorrect sentences in the English language.
history
The slogan was chosen in 1954 by Bowman Gray Jr., president of the tobacco company RJ Reynolds Tobacco Company , who was responsible for launching the new brand; the stylistically more sophisticated, but grammatically incorrect suggestion Winston tastes good like a cigarette ought to was discarded.
The first printed advertisement with the slogan appeared in September 1954 in the local newspaper Pittsburgh Post-Gazette , with another ad in the popular magazine Life was launched in the month following a nationwide advertising campaign. In 1955 Winston took over the sponsorship of the television shows by Walter Cronkite and Garry Moore , thus ensuring that the slogan was also spread via the new mass medium of television. The phrase was sung rather than spoken on radio and television ads. The catchiness was increased with a rhythmic trick by clapping hands twice between the words like a and cigarette should . This percussive element was varied in later spots , with an actor lighting his lighter twice in quick succession. In later years, Winston sponsored television series such as The Beverly Hillbillies and the Flintstones . In this context, the actors of the first-mentioned sitcom were hired for spots in which they praised the advantages of Winston cigarettes and finally gave the advertising slogan for the best. Wilma and Fred Feuerstein could also be seen in specially produced cartoons while smoking Winstons, which led to protests in the media public, as this series was also and especially seen by children. Winston gave up his sponsorship for the Feuerstein family, however, only in 1963 after the "birth" of the Feuerstein daughter Pebbles.
Grammar controversy
During the two decades of media coverage of the slogan, it has often been suggested that it is, strictly speaking, grammatically incorrect - correctly it should read Winston tastes good as a cigarette should . The use of like as a conjunction is widespread in American colloquial language, but has always been a thorn in the side of conservative language custodians. These apparently included Walter Cronkite, the anchorman of Winston-sponsored The Early Show , who refused to pronounce the sentence, so another spokesman had to be found to speak the slogan on his behalf. In his book The Tipping Point , however, the author Malcolm Gladwell implied that the “grammatically incorrect and quite provocative use of like instead of as ” made the brand's resounding success possible. In 1966 Winston Pall Mall overtook smokers and became the most popular cigarette brand in the United States.
The controversy over the use of like instead of as reached a climax around 1961 when the third edition of the New International Dictionary was published by Merriam-Webster , the leading dictionary publisher in the country. In this revised edition, the editors refused to condemn the use of like as a conjunction and cited Winston tastes good like a cigarette should as evidence of the widespread use of this linguistic phenomenon. The New York Times denigrated the new edition of the New International Dictionary as " Bolshevik, " and the Chicago Daily News interpreted the dictionary's editors' decision as a sign of a general decline in morals.
Winston responded to the allegations with a new campaign in 1970 and introduced the question What do you want, good grammar or good taste? ("What do you want, good grammar or good taste?"); the grammatically borderline old advertising slogan was finally abandoned in 1972.
swell
- ↑ "Top Ten Jingles of the Century"
- ↑ Simpson's Contemporary Quotations ( Memento of the original from October 31, 2007 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.
- ↑ "Winston beginnings" ( Memento of the original from September 2, 2006 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.
- ^ "Beverly Hillbillies, Flintstones and Joe Caml," CNN
- ↑ Winston Tastes Good, Like a Cigarette Should (original spot with the Feuerstein family)
- ^ Billy Ingram: Cigarette Advertising on TV
- ^ Garrick Utley, You Should Have Been Here Yesterday: A Life Story in Television News . ISBN 1-891620-94-0 , page 4
- ↑ Malcolm Gladwell: The Tipping Point: How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference Back Bay 2002. ISBN 0-316-34662-4 . P. 25
- ^ Edward Finegan: Language in the USA: Themes for the Twenty-First Century . Cambridge University Press 2004 ISBN 0-521-77175-7
