Surreptitious advertising

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Surreptitious advertising refers to secretive communication practices that might mislead the public about products or services. According to the Television Without Frontiers (TWF) Directive ^[1] from the EU, misleading representations of products are considered intentional "in particular if it is done in return for payment or for similar consideration".^[2]

Edward Bernays resorted to surreptitious advertising for the American Tobacco Company back in the 1920s: Women, he discovered, regarded cigarettes in the 1920s as phallic symbols of male power and therefore unsuitable for women. Bernays tried to make smoking attractive to women for ATC. He employed a group of women and asked them to dress up like suffragettes and go on strike. The women marched through New York's Fifth Avenue, and when newspaper reporters photographed them, they lit cigarettes and proclaimed them "torches of freedom".

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