FREAK-Shots: Your Dangerous Habits Are Cool

Cigarette advertisers generally don’t mention cancer, although Silk Cut seemed to use it (in the form of an alligator) to tell smokers they’re cool for tempting death.

Playing up your product’s risk isn’t a new strategy. This whiskey ad from the 1990’s, sent in by Freakonomics reader Douglas Kysar, makes vice look pretty sexy.

Photo: Douglas Kysar

The ad, from the Spanish magazine El Pais Semanal, would probably not go over well in Australia at the moment.

What about America?