Archive for the ‘Cigarette advertising’ Category
Enjoy the Moment – the best advice ever from a cigarette firm
There has been a recent addition to the Pall Mall Enjoy the Moment campaign. Here we find two women, one with a cigarette, and a man giving the smoking woman a piggyback ride. The strapline “schon nach Hause” translates literally as “already at home”; naturally we enjoy the moment.
JPS’s men with spanners
By goodness, the cigarette manufacturers do seem to like Hamburg as a city to market their lethal products. JPS (left), for example, occupies many of those smaller lit poster sites (bus shelters, etc.). What do we have here? Huge Plans. Enjoyable details. Presumably, let’s get that bolt sorted and we can go even faster on those infamous German autobahns. Better to die instantly now doing what we like rather than later with the inevitable chronic lung disease?
Pall Mall first with 2017 billboards in Germany
I arrived in Munich last night to the delights of Pa
ll Mall’s new campaign. The strap line is Enjoy the Moment. There are two posters doing the rounds – one of men (left) the other featuring a women and a man.
So, the scenario for the first one (left) is that the bloke on the left has lost a bet. The forfeit, however, is not what one might expect for a smoker, his life; rather the minor issue of his beard. I trust that his life ends in due course with ghastly lung 
disease.
The second one sees a woman in the foreground and a man in the background enjoying the rain (Pall Mall has a thing about women getting wet while smoking). “Schiet Wetter” goes the strapline (I think we can all translate that). Enjoy the moment. Two things I enjoy not very much. Being wet and cigarette smoke, other people’s,naturally.
Gauloises does carefree dancing in the street
Filed under: Cigarette advertising | Tags: Gauloises, Lucky Strike
Comments (2) So, Gauloises is rehashing some of 
the imagery of its Vive le Moment advertising campaign. New taglines. I have seen a newer version of the women with moustaches on railway stations without having the option of taking a photo. But the young couple dancing in the street is completely new to me. What is going on here? Tagline is “Old Love, rejoined, new fire”. Erm….ok. So, young couple break up and get back together again with new energy, hence the dancing in the street. Enjoy the moment, for sure.
What I am confused about here is the law on advertising in Germany. In my previous post on the subject, it was clear that negative images of the effects of smoking were explicit with the foetus in the ashtray. But here, with the exception of the small black writing at the bottom “smoking is deadly” (upgraded from “smoking can be deadly”), all is idyllic.
Luckies hoping we do not notice?
Filed under: Cigarette advertising | Tags: Camel, Gauloises, Luckies, marlboro
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I suppose that when the UK leaves the EU and Nigel Farage becomes PM at the behest of the US President, then cigarette advertising will be back on the streets of the UK as they are in Germany. The run up to Christmas is not the best time to see this particular species of advertising, but the Lucky Strike – Luckies – brand is loitering in U-Bahn Stations in Munich (left).
What is interesting about this one, notwithstanding its lack of imagination – good deal and thick, if my translation is up to it – is that it is forced to show something nasty on the front. Inside the black band on the packet is an ashtray with the ash forming the shape of a foetus. This is the first time that I have seen this on street posters. It raises the question as to whether the advertisers could have avoided this by not showing the packet? If they are able to do so, then this is an even more stupid billboard than I had first thought. If they cannot, how is the negative image going to be represeted on more alluring advertising such as that practised by Marlboro, Camel and Gauloises? I trust the answer will come like the answer to plenty of other potentially lethal questions (Trump, le Pen, Wilders) in the much-anticipated 2017!
Three killers together
Filed under: Cigarette advertising | Tags: Chesterfield, L&M, marlboro
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The three killer brands appear on the same billboard – Marlboro, L&M and Chesterfield. To what end?
Seemingly, they will now have the same box but with similar numbers of sticks. I assume this is something to do with European packaging regulations where two-thirds of the pack have to show the lethal side of the product rather than the brand. I need to check the packets in the shop.
Camel pushes on with its “do your thing” campaign
Germany is currently being blanketed with striking posters for Camel cigarettes. Quite a few feature women smoking in public places. Here (left) we see the blonde-haired woman again with, what appears to be, a “don’t care what some of us think” expression. She’s young, confident, and, for the time being, healthy. She also has a friend (bottom left).
What is interesting about this campaign – and something that it shares with the Marlboro parallel “You Decide” campaign – is how unsubtle some of the images are. For example, the woman (right) who is in the process of lighting up. (Apologies for the poor pictures, many of them are behind plastic and on sunny days the reflections are unavoidable.) I have recorded many advertising images over the years where cigarettes do not feature at all. A 
mere association is regarded as sufficient to promote a smoking lifestyle. Camel itself has moved a long way from its subtle brand-based “Untamed” campaign. I’m not entirely sure what this means. But as the increasingly small warning at the bottom of each poster says, “smoking is deadly”. If you are lucky.
Camel libertarianism
Most readers of this blog come to view my musings over cigarette advertising in Germany. My political musings are not so well read. They have, however, seemed more important in the weeks since the Brexit referendum. However, with the onset of Trumpism in the USA, I’m getting prematurely scared. Cigarettes, though lethal, are not lethal in the mass sense, unlike the finger of a mad man on the nuclear button. Now I wonder whether the American owners of the Camel brand have realised that armageddon is around the corner, so before it happens (he will not take office until January 2017 – as if 2016 hasn’t been bad enough), so smokers and non-smokers alike have 6 months or so to “do your thing”!
First up then is the short-haired bespectacled woman doing her thing. This looks like smoking in a public place and challenging anyone to say something to her. In fact, if I could lip-read, I am sure she has just said “Trump”. TRUMP. In response to a question like “could you please smoke 8m away from my window, please?”
Now Trump also claims to be not from the (political) elite. But he clearly likes money garnered from the policies of the elites over the last 30 or 40 years or so. Low taxation, screwing the poor (and in Trump’s case, anyone living near one of his golf courses in Scotland), etc. So, Camel has an
advertisement to sum this up (right). Here we have some sort of sharp-suited Bloefeld character sat in a leather armchair with a brunette woman in the background. So often cigarette advertisements are about sex, but here, it is about power, apparent wealth and sophistication. All seems a bit humourless to me, but what do I know?
By contrast, hipsters (left) seem to do their own thing as well. Now this man is virility incarnate. Full beard and follickled pate. No cigarettes. He is doing a sort of Mr Spock with his fingers. Preaching Vulcanism, perhaps? Do your thing but don’t vote Trump? Creepy.
Finally – and the only full-sized avertisement from this campaign that I have so far found, 
features 3 people – one smoking bloke and two women. They seem to be walking arm in arm, with the woman in the foreground seemingly concerned about the one in the middle. The bloke, by contrast in just doing his own thing. I think. This one is the odd one out of the four, I think. Maybe over time it will become clearer.
A very German approach to advertising
Filed under: Business, Cigarette advertising, Travel | Tags: Munich
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I love wandering around cities. In my younger days and earlier travels, I did it because it was always cheap and, largely, did not require communication. I have got myself into a bit of bother doing this. One can find oneself alone on an uncomfortable street with the sun going down. Athens springs to mind.
In Munich, where I spend quite a bit of my time, I have a “favourite” street. Actually it is a busy thoroughfare – a four-lane highway to-and-from the centre. What I like about it is that it seems to sum up the real city. I come from a wholly unattractive city, so I am used to finding beauty in things that are not generally regarded as beautiful. It is not an attractive street – it has more petrol stations on it than you can shake a stick at. It is dotted with mid-range hotels. There are more pharmacies on it than in the whole of the UK. And it has advertising hoardings in abundance. When I want to check out the latest cigarette advertising (one of the main draws to this blog, I have to say), this is the place to go.
In recent weeks, the cigarette companies have been keeping a low profile. They have been rolling out posters from
earlier campaigns; for example, JSP (right). Yesterday, we were walking along this street to a supermarket, something which we do often. I was keeping my eyes peeled for cigarette advertisements, but saw nothing. However, I did see the poster for…a sex toy (above left). My partner was oblivious. But it just hit me in the face. It is a clever one, too. It draws on football – the concept of “extra time” or “Nachspielzeit”. 15 per cent discount as well. Extraordinary.
The 65 per cent rule
Finally, cigarette packets in the UK will look like this once the current stock has been sold! Brands will no longer draw in users. Only nicotine and addiction.
However, readers of this blog know only too well that in Germany, cigarette advertising continues for inexplicable reasons. But it is about to change considerably. The 65 per cent rule comes from the European Commission and states that 65 per cent of any cigarette packet must be covered with warnings about the lethality of the contents in all member states. So, take Marlboro, with it’s You Decide campaign (right).
The campaign posters and the packet is all about the brand. Currently, about one-third of the packet contains the warning Rauchen kann tödlich sein (smoking can be deadly). So, that warning will have to be doubled on both sides. How much room left for the brand? We’ll see how the advertising responds to this challenge. At the moment, there are no new posters on railway stations or on the side of the roads to evaluate!
Be informed 
