WASHINGTON -- Flipping through his morning newspaper earlier this week, retired advertising executive Edward Just was naturally curious when he came across the latest U.S. Postal Service ad touting the agency's global delivery services.
"For one thing," he said, "there was a nice-looking gal in it."
Indeed, the ad features a shapely woman in a long, black dress with a plunging neckline, holding a glass of champagne in one hand and a cigarette aloft in the other, seemingly oblivious to her smitten suitor kneeling at her side.
"Some things just transcend cultures," the Postal Service ad went on to exclaim.
![[illustration]](../images/postalad.gif) The U.S. Postal Service's controversial ad. |
For Mr. Just, however, who lives just west of Cleveland, the ad was a prime example of tax dollars going to waste. "It seems to me that if the federal government is spending millions to influence people not to smoke ... this ad is not really furthering that aim," he said.
Although the Postal Service no longer receives tax dollars, the agency has been quite diligent as of late in playing down the perceived glamour of lighting up. In 1995, it banned smoking in all Postal Service facilities. And when the agency featured legendary blues guitarist Robert Johnson and artist Jackson Pollock on postage stamps, both appeared without their trademark cigarettes.
So how did the latest ad, cigarette and all, find its way into several newspapers, including The Wall Street Journal?
Blame it on a cultural disconnect. Postal officials say they never meant to promote smoking, or make it appear glamorous. "In other countries, cigarette smoking is cultural," said Roy Betts, a Postal Service spokesman, explaining that the ad was meant to have an international flavor.
Officials at some of the nation's leading antismoking groups said they had not seen the ad, but when it was pointed out they reacted with indignation.
John Garrison, chief executive officer at the American Lung Association, called the cigarette "an unnecessary prop. I think they were trying to be clever and they missed," he said. "This is going to backfire on the Postal Service."
David Kessler, former commissioner at the Food and Drug Administration and current dean of the Yale School of Medicine, said it was slick Madison Avenue advertisements that transformed smoking from a "disgusting habit" practiced mostly by men at the turn of the century to a symbol of sophistication and female liberation decades later.
"I don't think it's much ado about nothing," Mr. Kessler said of the Postal Service ad. "It may seem like much ado about nothing, but that's the problem. We have these images in our minds, and that's what needs to be undone."
The Postal Service said it pulled the ad Tuesday, but will continue its pitch to the global marketplace.
While fighting stiff competition from companies such as Federal Express and United Parcel Service of America, the Postal Service in recent years has also found itself battling stagnant growth in first-class mail because of Internet e-mail and electronic bill-paying.
Eye-catching advertisements have emerged as a potent weapon in that fight, said Mr. Betts, who wouldn't say how much the agency paid for the aborted campaign or how long it was intended to run. In fiscal year 1998, he said, the agency spent a total of $301 million on all advertising, up from $266 million in 1997.
Young & Rubicam, the New York agency that produced the ad, had little comment. "We've been instructed to pull the ad by our client," said Y&R spokesman Philippe Krakowsky. "That's all I'm willing to say on the record."