It’s hard to imagine in our health-conscious society today, but yes, there was a time when you could smoke cigarettes just about everywhere – definitely in restaurants and bars, but even in communal offices and crowded airplanes.

But in 2020, lighting up has been prohibited in virtually all public places, and the number of Americans who say they’ve smoked one in the past week has fallen steadily since the 1980s, according to Gallup. Smoking also makes you more vulnerable to COVID-19 infection, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).

Back in the 1960s, cigarette smoke was everywhere, says Margaret Custer Ford, the retired founder of MARCO Ideas Unlimited in Portland, OR, and the second female Counselor Person of the Year. Need a picture? Watch just one episode of the critically acclaimed AMC TV series Mad Men, which shows just how ubiquitous cigarettes were in mid-century America.

Mad Men (2007/2015) pic.twitter.com/ijsAWLfTQ1

— Grafomani (@grafomaniblog) April 20, 2020

That meant that matchbooks were an ideal promotional product for the time.

“Putting a message on a matchbook was a means of carrying a brand’s story at a very minimal cost per impression,” says Custer Ford. “It was only a fraction of a cent, but it guaranteed the advertiser at least 20 exposures.”

Custer Ford used matchbooks as self-promos too, something she was reminded of recently when her son found one of them on sale on eBay. Custer Ford says that, 50 years ago, she ordered 2,500 matchbooks to be placed on tables ahead of her speaking engagement before the Portland Advertising Federation at the historic Benson Hotel in downtown Portland.

This matchbook, a distributor self-promo from the 1960s, was recently found on eBay.

Her address, “How to Ignite Yourself (Without Burning),” would focus on the benefits of smart strategies in promotional products. In line with the topic, Custer Ford managed to order matchbooks of headless matches. But it was hard to get suppliers to listen to what she wanted.

“I was from a small southern Oregon city, and a woman at that,” she says. “It was the kind of meeting a busy executive could easily miss!”

She went on to deliver the same talk – and the same self-promos – to advertising classes at Portland State University and Oregon State, and to an ad club in San Francisco.

But the fact that her giveaway turned up recently on eBay shows staying power of promotional products, what Custer Ford says were for a long time called “remembrance advertising.”

“It certainly proves the point,” she says. “Specialty advertising is the medium that remains to be seen.”