Rethinking the Image

Image source: https://tobacco.stanford.edu/cigarettes/modern-strategies/silk-cut-modern/#collection-37 (Accessed: 18 September 2025). © Saatchi & Saatchi

In the 1970s, a series of regulatory and legislative changes placed significant restrictions on the nature of tobacco advertising in the United Kingdom^[1]. As well as being required to display a government-mandated health warning on their advertisements, tobacco companies were no longer able to advertise their products directly or in ways that were straightforwardly aspirational^[2][3].

These restrictions forced tobacco brands to adopt highly creative visual strategies in marketing their products, often employing surreal or irrelevant imagery which was interwoven with subtle yet playful references to branding^[2]. This approach was pioneered by the Benson & Hedges brand^[2], but the Charles Saatchi-led Silk Cut campaigns of the 1980s and 1990s^[4][5] would take it to new levels of irreverence and subversion.

Likely dating from the mid-1990s, this advertising image^[6] shows a swordfish in profile against a solid blue background. The subject matter and stark visual arrangement of the image were likely inspired by Damien Hirst’s The Physical Impossibility of Death in the Mind of Someone Living – a conceptual artwork comprising a tiger shark in a tank of formaldehyde solution – which itself had been commissioned by Saatchi^[7][8]. The ripples and bubbles at the top of the image, however, are suggestive of a living sea creature in its natural habitat.

The most striking element of this image is the fish’s elongated bill. Adding to its humorously artificial effect is its serrated edge – a recognisable element of the domestic world which is interpolated into the natural environment with surreal consequences. The fish sports a pair of purple shorts with a silk-like texture, the implication being that the bill of the swordfish has pierced or cut the shorts from the legs of an unfortunate swimmer – a reading which is enforced by their jagged hemline.

Further adding to the humour of the situation is the fact that the fish appears to be wearing the shorts in a humanlike way, with its tail fin substituting for human legs. The viewer may also notice the fish’s anthropomorphic expression of surprise, with its left eye pointing towards the shorts that it has unexpectedly acquired and its mouth agape.

It is only once the viewer has registered these elements, and noted the health warning at the bottom of the advertisement, that they are able to discern both the type of product and the specific brand that it promotes. As in other images from the Silk Cut campaigns^[4][5], the various elements of the image work together as a pictorial reference to the Silk Cut brand, with the texture of the shorts representing the word ‘Silk’, the serrated edge of the fish’s bill representing the word ‘Cut’, and the purple colour of the shorts representing the distinctive packaging of the brand’s cigarettes^[9].

The way in which humour is constructed in this image is therefore an example of how modern advertisers are able to transform the advertising image into a game or puzzle, requiring commitment on the part of the viewer^[10]. Here, this commitment is rewarded with a sardonically humorous narrative which attaches connotations of intelligence and sophistication to the Silk Cut brand.

[1] Action on Smoking and Health (no date) Key Dates in Tobacco Regulation. Available at: https://ash.org.uk/uploads/Key-Dates_2022-04-21-101255_ajre.pdf (Accessed: 18 September 2025).

[2] Parker-Pope, T. (1996) ‘Tough Tobacco-Ad Rules Light Creative Fires’, The Wall Street Journal, 9 October. Available at: https://www.industrydocuments.ucsf.edu/tobacco/docs/#id=yspg0080 (Accessed: 18 September 2025).

[3] D&AD (2019) Dave Trott on Bravery and the Creative Industries. 3 April. Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jGPuMkbQ4UI&t=327s (Accessed: 18 September 2025).

[4] The University of Alabama (no date) Silk Cut: Surrealism as Subversion. Available at: https://csts.ua.edu/silk-cut/ (Accessed: 18 September 2025).

[5] Stanford Research into the Impact of Tobacco Advertising (no date) Collection: Silk Cut Modern. Available at: https://tobacco.stanford.edu/cigarettes/modern-strategies/silk-cut-modern/ (Accessed: 18 September 2025).

[6] The scanned image linked at the top of this article appears to be taken from a double-page spread in a magazine.

[7] Whiddington, R. (2024) Art Bites: How Damien Hirst Got His Shark(s). Available at: https://news.artnet.com/art-world/art-bites-damien-hirst-sharks-2449572 (Accessed: 18 September 2025).

[8] In their pursuit of irrelevant yet appealing imagery, tobacco brands such as Benson & Hedges and Silk Cut made frequent reference to fine art in their advertising campaigns (see [3], [4], and [5]), furthering the connotations of sophistication and refinement that were generated through their mysterious, ludic nature.

[9] See: https://tobacco.stanford.edu/cigarettes/modern-strategies/silk-cut-modern/#collection-81 (Accessed: 18 September 2025).

[10] Scott, D. (2010) Poetics of the Poster: The Rhetoric of Image-Text. Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, p. 14.