Carolyn H., Caroline, and Dmitriy T.M. sent us a link to a slide show comparing tampon and cigarette advertising. It turns out there is a humorous thematic overlap. For decades, both products have been marketed with the message: “Be free, have fun, be you! Do it outside if possible!”
This Newport ad, for example:
And this tampon ad:
The slide show counterposed these ads to illustrate the trend:
With the rather limited number of marketing messages (“all good things come to people who buy our products”), these sorts of unintentional thematic overlaps must be very common… but I’d never thought of it before!
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Lisa Wade is a professor of sociology at Occidental College. You can follow her on Twitter and Facebook.
