Author Meets Critics: Pushing Cool: Big Tobacco, Racial Marketing, and the Untold Story of the Menthol Cigarette

Abstract

Abstract: This Author Meets Critics conversation focuses on Keith Wailoo’s book Pushing Cool: Big Tobacco, Racial Marketing, and the Untold Story of the Menthol Cigarette (University of Chicago Press, 2021). Wailoo met with marketing and advertising specialists from various disciplines to discuss the following topics: racialized marketing and its role in the history of the menthol cigarette in the United States; the interconnections between Big Tobacco and the advertising industry; the connection between the asphyxiation of Black people at the hands of law enforcement and Big Tobacco’s targeting of Black people to consume menthol cigarettes; the creation of markets based on race; the role of motivational research consultants like Ernest Dichter in the 1950s and 1960s; the Master Settlement Agreement archive housing decades of Big Tobacco’s internal documents, including marketing research and plans; regulation’s impact on Big Tobacco’s changing tactics and priorities to sell menthol cigarettes; the contradictory roles of civil rights activists and the Black press in the history of the menthol cigarette; the need to find and eliminate legal loopholes that can lead to taking advantage of minority communities; the power and dangers of diverse representation in advertising for dangerous products like cigarettes; and advice for professors, students, and practitioners. The videos include a wealth of examples of tobacco and public service advertisements.