In the 1920s, American Tobacco came to Bernays with a problem: it was taboo for women to smoke and that meant they were losing out on half the American public as customers. They asked Bernays if he could come up with a way to break the taboo, and he did by connecting smoking to women’s rights. He staged a protest, asking some of his friends’ daughters to march up and down 5th avenue smoking, then alerted the press about it and voila a campaign was born. Within a year it was no longer taboo for women to smoke and American Tobacco was selling more than ever.