Project SCUM was a plan proposed in 1995 by RJ Reynolds Tobacco Company to sell cigarettes to members of the "alternative lifestyle" areas of San Francisco– in particular the large number of gay people in the Castro and homeless people in the Tenderloin. The acronym "SCUM" stood for "Subculture Urban Marketing." They targeted minority and female audiences in a similar fashion as well.
Thanks to the Master Settlement Agreement through an act of Congress, the internal documents and memos of the four largest tobacco companies were made public. We scoured these documents and then used the words from private, corporate communications to make public-facing ads. People freaked.
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