Be informed

The last post I made on cigarette advertising in Germany was 10 February, just before Germany went into lockdown. Even then, I thought that cigarette advertising was on the wane and we were unlikely to see big cigarette campaigns by the big brands. One of the reasons for this was the growth of e-cigarettes. Campaign budgets were being transferred from authentic killing to massaged killing. The clearest indicator of that is the warning at the bottom of each advertisement. Traditional cigarette advertising (bottom right) says “smoking is deadly”. Advertising for the new delivery method of super-heated tobacco says “this way of smoking can damage your health and make you dependent”. And to demonstrate how cool we are – and is this method of killing or maiming otherwise healthy people, let’s have a picture of an attractive women who nicely illustrates the product “glo”. The important thing for the tobacco company behind it, British American Tobacco, is that it is real tobacco from real tobacco plants, with real killer chemicals.

I have been out-and-about in Munich recently. Finally, I found a couple of cigarette advertising posters. Take the first one (right), I may have got the translation wrong, but maybe the packet is big enough to act as a parasol? Ho ho ho! There is some double meaning there that defeats me with my limited translation skills. Actually, I think one could actually live in the box, let alone use it as a parasol.

The second poster (left) goes for the time theme. If I am reading it right, there are so many cigarettes in the packet that in getting through them one has the time to name some woman? Again, this may well be marketing genius, but I am happy with my failure to appreciate perceived marketing cleverness on products that are designed to kill and maim.