Be informed

Cigarette advertisements in Munich are sprouting like spring flowers. Three brands are slugging it out on the streets, Pall Mall, Camel and Gauloises (making a welcome return to the narrative).

Pall Mall has gone monochrome with a set of posters featuring people who have amazing lives. Seemingly. These two loveable men, according to the caption, as I  understand it, have very colourful lives already (hence the monochrome picture). The cigarette seems to help their masculinity.

There is an equivalent for the women (right). These two sophisticates ask what are we to think of them? Not much. Really.

The French brand, Gauloises, has a similar approach with its ‘Vive le Moment’ campaign. Of course, this involves, like the competitors, living life to the full with cigarettes, a seemingly contradictory idea. Here we have two people having fun in a bath – though the cigarette is unsurprisingly absent. Somehow they have ended up in this situation having missed a flight and checked in to a different hotel. As you do. Both of them seem to have overcome their nicotine addiction and predilection to cancer in favour of sexually transmitted diseases.

There is an exclusively female take on this. Here they use their long tresses to create moustaches. Why would they do this? Not sure. Maybe they should get to know the hairy men in the Pall Mall ad. Could be a good night of tobacco exchanges. Or not.

And then there is Camel, ‘untamed since 1913’. Colourful. A bit like gravestones. Quite fitting really.