Winston tastes good like a cigarette should

The advertising agency William Esty Co. deliberately, and ungrammatically, used "like" rather than "as" (subordinating conjunction) in the slogan and jingle.

In The Beverly Hillbillies,[8] the stars Buddy Ebsen, Irene Ryan, and Nancy Kulp extolled the virtues of Winstons while smoking them and reciting the jingle.

[10] During the campaign's long run in the media, many criticized the slogan as grammatically incorrect, asserting that it should say, "Winston tastes good as a cigarette should."

[12] Malcolm Gladwell, in The Tipping Point, says that this "ungrammatical and somehow provocative use of 'like' instead of 'as' created a minor sensation" in 1954 and implies that the phrase itself was responsible for vaulting the brand to second place in the U.S.

[citation needed] In the fall of 1961, a small furor enveloped the literary and journalistic communities in the United States when Merriam-Webster published its Third New International Dictionary.

In the dictionary, the editors refused to condemn the use of "like" as a conjunction, and cited "Winston tastes good like a cigarette should" as an example of popular colloquial use.

After publication of Webster's Third, The New York Times called the edition "bolshevik," and the Chicago Daily News wrote that the transgression signified "a general decay in values.

Garner, who narrated the original commercial, stated that his first action ever to be captured on film was to misread the line that had been provided to him.