Ulotne jak dym? Kryptoreklama i przemiany obyczajów – o kampanii Polskiego Monopolu Tytoniowego na łamach „Kobiety Współczesnej” w latach 1931-1932

The paper is a dispute with the theses propagated in 1930s about backwardness and primitivism of Polish press advertising. The analysis of a series of texts published in the Warsaw’s weekly “Kobieta Współczesna” [Modern Woman] between October 1931 and November 1932 indicates astonishing similarity to the methods used in the USA by Edward L. Bernays, the father of 'public relations', in 1928-1929. The texts camouflaged as feature articles about fashion, good manners and decency or quasi stories and health warnings are aiming to create in female readers positive associations between smoking cigarettes (and the names of particular brands) and elegance, modernity, liberation, sensuality and life in comfort. This crypto advertising strategy, modelled on the American method, is an example of deliberate actions which contributed to breaking the long-lasting social taboo on smoking in public by woman in the Interwar Years. In order to gain access to new markets for particular products these actions have changed culture.