From UCSF’s Legacy Tobacco Documents Library, “How an Agency Builds a Brand–The Virginia Slims Story.”
In an interview with Alan Sepinwall wrapping up the latest season of Mad Men, Matthew Weiner said, “We were always interested in this early Virginia Slims thing. We loved the fact that it was a small, undesirable product for everybody, and it of course became a pretty big success. But that’s such a famous campaign written by such a distinctive person that I would never do that.” But what’s the real story behind Virginia Slims? As Hal Weinstein of Leo Burnett asserts:
Cigarettes have gender, as everyone knows. It was a study by Pierre Martineau, I am told, that first pointed out that cigarettes are either masculine or feminine but never successfully neuter.