Nowadays, many products not only need to be of excellent quality, but also invite many celebrities and live broadcasts to promote them, or add other cultural meanings to the products. Only when packaging and quality are achieved at the same time can there be sales. Of course, many netizens believe that this sales model is an unhealthy promotion method spurred by the developed Internet. In fact, as early as the Republic of China, businessmen had already noticed the star effect and cultural effect. Just look at the five most popular cigarette brands at that time.

Laodao cigarettes

Laodao cigarettes are a type of cigarette issued by the British Wheels Company. They were originally named Pirate (translated as pirates) in Shanghai in 1891. Issuance started and the price was set relatively low. At the beginning, Wheels Company also gave many cigarettes to the Manchu and Qing royal families for free, and asked the Manchu and Qing royal families to promote them. When people saw the royal family advertising it, they naturally rushed to buy it.

After the Qing Dynasty was overthrown, the British and American Tobacco Company (an alliance of tobacco companies organized by Britain and the United States in 1902) followed the same pattern and used taxes to get the Beiyang government to promote it. In 1919, due to the outbreak of the May Fourth Movement, the British American Tobacco Company decided to change the packaging to Chinese. Because the pirates had big swords in their hands, they changed their name to Laodao. Lu Xun's favorite was Laodao cigarettes.

After the founding of New China, the state-owned Shanghai Tobacco Company owned the property rights of Laodao brand cigarettes, renamed them Labor brand, and completely stopped production in 1997.

Three Fortress Cigarettes

After the Revolution of 1911, many Chinese capital companies emerged. In order to compete for the market, the British and American Tobacco Companies wanted to use Chinese culture to promote their cigarette brands, so they pretended to be Chinese companies. Many cigarette trademarks have been developed one after another in the name of the company. In 1914, the British and American Cigarette Company launched a cigarette called San Paotai. The cigarette box was printed with slogans such as "Three Paotai, the famous cigarette today; Liu Guanzhang, the hero of ancient times".

Liu, Guan, and Zhang were the main figures in the Shu Kingdom during the Three Kingdoms period, and they were also familiar figures. The brotherhood between the three was touching. People thought that San Fortress was a Chinese brand and bought it one after another, especially the warlords at that time. Chu Yunfei in "Bright Sword" smoked San Fortress. Unfortunately, it gradually lost the market and finally stopped production.

Fairy brand cigarettes

Fairy brand cigarettes appeared much later than the above two. It was a cigarette brand that was only launched in the 1930s. As the name suggests, Fairy cigarettes are naturally a brand of cigarettes designed specifically for women. Initially, the cigarettes had pictures of ladies painted on them, and singers from Shanghai New World were hired for promotion. Later, Lu Xiaoman, Ruan Lingyu and others also became obsessed with Fairy brand cigarettes, and the company naturally used them as examples to promote their products. However, because the audience of Fairy Cards was only women, it gradually declined.

The above three cigarettes can only be found in old photos, but the next two cigarette brands are still in production today.