Be informed

In England the cigarette companies are lobbying hard against the proposal to force standard packaging. Their defence is that standard packaging would make counterfeiting easier and make the consumption of cigarettes even more dangerous than it already is. However, the current campaign for JSP in Germany shows how important the packaging can be. JSP packs now have an interesting innovation, GLIDE TEC. The poster (left) indicates that cigarettes are ‘dispensed’ when the pack is pressed at a particular point. The implication here is that this makes smoking even more sociable – seductive – as can be seen in the face of the woman on the billboard.

On this ongoing topic, two new players have entered the advertising space with two different types of campaign. First the Parisien brand goes for the wacky, happy, let the packets say it all approach (left). Parisien is one of the British American Tobacco brands which is particularly popular in Switzerland. The advertising reflects the brand’s alignment with non-mainstream film directors such as Jean-Luc Goddard, David Lynch and the Coen Brothers. (Most of this detail is drawn from Wikipedia as I had never come across the brand before. I will see what else I can find.)

The second new brand has a very male image. This image shows five men enjoying themselves in some indoor dark place, perhaps some bar or club. Though there is light suggesting that they have come from a bright outside to be there. However, the headlines defy my german. Normal ist Montags Mädelsabend. Normal kann jeder. My translation would have it that Monday is girls’ night. Perhaps there is an accompanying campaign that would make the whole thing clearer as the Malboro ‘Maybe’ campaign has become?

Wikipedia notes that L&M is a product from the Altria Group, Inc., formally Philip Morris. It is an American brand that is very popular in Asia. It clearly has remarkable properties if this youtube advertisement from 2009 is anything to go by: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DoFlb3UsMJk Oddly, terminal cancer is not mentioned.

Gauloises – the iconic french brand – is copying Pall Mall and, to a lesser extent, Marlboro. Again, only one of the people in the picture is smoking, but equating smoking with some kind of idyll seems to the the theme of the moment. Equally, though without a hint of irony, cigarettes without additives, are something to be celebrated.

I have also taken a photograph of a cigarette machine, typical of those one encounters on street corners in Munich. They do seem a shade incongruous.

Young people are directly targeted by the cigarette firms. The latest Pall Mall ad – which I don’t have a snap of yet – features a group of young people on a rooftop enjoying the spring with alcohol and cigarettes. There are some curiousities here. In most of the Pall Mall ads featuring young people, it only seems to be one of them actually smoking.

Marlboro’s latest advertisement features young people in a night club. There are no explicit images of individuals smoking, but being thrown in the air is certainly fun. The slogan MAYBE NEVER WILL defeats me. Any help on this would be appreciated. However, the text at the bottom indicates that the tar that one receives in smoking the cigarette may vary depending on how one smokes it; i.e. inhaling or not. That’s reassuring.

Anyone interested more widely on global trends in the cigarette industry might care to visit: http://www.cigarettezoom.blogspot.com

For more pictures visit: https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.3099817648662.2141196.1060779322&type=1

This is certainly turning out to be quite a thread for me. Whenever I pass through Laim station in Munich, I must view the latest episode in the smoking young people for Pall Mall. The latest has a spring theme. Same old toxic sticks. But now we can smoke them on the green pastures of the Alps.

So, what is new on the German cigarette advertising front? Only three weeks ago (see post 23 Jan 2012) I reported on advertising for Pall Mall cigarettes in Munich involving beautiful young people being poisoned. This time, on the exact same advertising hoarding, I found Lucky Strike brand demonstrating its environmental credentials. (Both brands incidentally are owned by the same American and British producers.) Again, notwithstanding that these products are toxic and cause known chronic diseases, Lucky Strike’s marketing people seem to think that packing them in recycled or sustainably sourced cardboard without aluminium foil is a worth shouting about.

Travel is great for contrasts. In many respects Germany, for example, is a highly regulated country. It is very difficult to do some things that normally I take for granted in the UK. Online mobile phone top-ups are a case in point; likewise trying to get mail sent to an address that one is not officially registered at. It is very frustrating.

With that in mind, I still find it very strange that the Germans still allow cigarette advertising. This one for Pall Mall can be found on all railway stations in Munich and maybe elsewhere. It depicts a group of beautiful young people in the Alps (presumably skiing) killing themselves with cigarettes.