“Reach for a Lucky instead of a Sweet”

To open my speech, I intend to exhibit the karios of my artifact by stating statistics on teen use of cigarettes in the 1950’s compared to the teen use of juul and other vaping devices today. Hopefully, this will draw the audience in as teen vaping is a very hot issue right now as companies attempt to save face as they face more and more regulations. This moves me to my second point, I plan on speaking to what inspired or caused this poster to be put into production. That cause being new scientific research coming out that cigarettes were actually harmful to the user. This artifact is civic because it serves to change public opinion/market a product and even a lifestyle through multiple persuasion techniques. For example, the advertisement includes a celebrity endorsement of actor John Gilbert, an A list actor in his time. The poster also attempts to warp public perception of their brand in particular  by using the tagline “Its Toasted”, this makes the viewing think of other cigarettes as poisonous, but Lucky as natural and toasted. The poster further distances itself from other cigarette companies and emphasizes their products “healthiness” by stating that the toasting negates the irritation and coughing that other companies’ cigarettes cause. The message of this artifact is marketed directly to the consumer, and essentially, the message is rejecting the recent medical findings of the time and claiming that although cigarettes could possibly be bad, our cigarettes are the healthiest possible option. This artifact also relates to my other artifact, which is a WPA poster against drinking and driving. I think it would be interesting towards the end of my speech to bring up other the similarities and differences on how the federal government and private companies attempt to persuade and inform the public about societal vices.