It seems those Breaking Bad-inspired blue meth dealers are on to something: People really will buy what they see on TV.
The latest possible evidence comes from the Ivey Business Review, which posits that a 44 percent increase in sales of Lucky Strike cigarettes over the past five years is the result of the brand’s prominence on AMC’s Mad Men.
IBR, which says it is “researching the effects and outcomes of a product or brand being strongly associated with popular media,” observed that the cigarette brand’s sales have shot up since 2007, when Mad Men premiered.
“While the claim that Mad Men could have driven a nearly 50 percent increase in Lucky Strike sounds like typical advertising puffery,” the Ivey Business Review argues, “it’s hard to pin down another driver. Lucky Strike did launch new flavors, update packaging and launch ‘capsule’ cigarettes in the five years since Mad Men premiered, but so too did its competitors….Even if one excluded all [sales of newly launched products], Lucky Strike would still have grown 12 percent between 2007 and 2012, five times faster than the industry overall and eight times British American Tobacco (the owner of Lucky Strike).”
For a lack of a better explanation for the increase, the Ivey Business Review is running with the Man Men theory, also pointing out that the same unexplained sales bump was shown by Canadian Club Whiskey. The whiskey brand had shown a decline in sales for 17 years running prior to Mad Men. But in less than a year after “Don Draper ordered his first C.C. on the rocks,” as IBR puts it, the brand turned around, and has since seen a 4.3p percent increase in sales each year. Canadian Club has the benefit of two TV shows pushing its brand: It’s also featured on HBO’s Boardwalk Empire.
Here’s the classic Don Draper “it’s toasted” pitch to Lucky Strike:
For real period drama, watch Living History on FilmOn:
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