Archive for the ‘Cigarette advertising’ Category
The Gauloises naughty couple in a bath are back
Here’s a thing, this week I walked past a cigarette advertisement for Gauloises, as you do (in Germany, that is). I dismissed it as one that I already have cataloged and lampooned. But yesterday I was stood on the platform at a S-Bahn station in Munich and read the tagline on the displayed poster and thought perhaps this was not the original advertisement. And so it has proved (see below right). My take on the original was
that death by toxic tobacco seemed not to be enough for this couple, maybe a STD might help. This is because the tagline suggested they had just met and decided to have a bath together in a hotel room, as you do.
The revised tagline suggests that they already know each other and they have decided to have a bath together because of “stau in Badzimmer” – translated by me as congestion in the bathroom. I am wondering if this is evidence of the impact of this blog on the advertising industry. So shocked were they at my interpretation that they have reworked it to make the main characters seem a little less promiscuous? Or not.
It nearly slipped past me.
Pall Mall couples and trite taglines
Apologies about the quality of this photo, it even has my image in the reflection, but for the time being it makes the point. Advertisers are so inconsiderate putting their posters behind plastic.
Pall Mall again has a couple – handsome bearded man with cigarette and blonde woman. From what I understand of the tagline, the hole in the filter solves most problems, all wishes granted. Seemingly.
The wish of longevity, I sense, is not granted by this toxic innovation. But there you go.
Born that Way, JPS latest
Maybe the translation does not work, but JSP‘s latest “always upright, never overbearing/presumptuous” is a curious tagline. Three men, one woman, two visibly smoking. Clearly an engaging conversation, but as usual it is a bearded man leading the important discussion and discernibly impressing, if not charming, the woman. Bearded man at the back is the person when four people try to walk a pavement together who has to move to the back in order to avoid being run over by a car. Or maybe he is the poor one who cannot afford cigarettes so he stands behind those who can in order to get a passive hit? Just a thought. Not much else going on.
Marlboro’s You Decide goes raddled old man
Filed under: Cigarette advertising, Uncategorized | Tags: marlboro, You Decide
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Naturally I thought the point of advertising was to sell products. So, use beautiful people doing interesting things in the sunshine. Clearly, I am no marketeer. However, I need some guidance on the logic of Marlboro’s latest use of a raddled old man lighting up a cigarette (left). As for the strapline, will the world care what your name was (assuming he does not have too much life left in him)? No idea!
Marlboro has another You Decide poster current (right). This is more like it. Handsome, fit, bearded man with
cigarette looks into the camera. Another seemingly meaningless strapline, ‘Will you stay real’? ‘Will you turn into the raddled old man?’ strikes me as being more appropriate.
You Decide, the new Maybe
Filed under: Cigarette advertising, Uncategorized | Tags: marlboro, You Decide
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A few weeks ago Marlboro started posting up their blank You Decide. posters (left) in that marketing ruse to spark interest. You Decide. what? An urban mystery that is compelling. The next installment is then eagerly anticipated.
The theme is now developing well across Germany and presumably other territories where
cigarette advertising is still permitted. Here are two examples. First, we are asked “Is up the only way?” in hand-written red letters. An image of a mature blond-haired woman accompanies the slogan.
Men, by contrast, are asked “How far is enough?” in similarly fonted writing. The man is modern urban figure courting a beard and sitting on what seems to be a wooden box.
OK, this is an unfolding narrative. There are more to come, for sure. Though, let me re-iterate, there is only one direction for smokers and this point is far enough. Quit.
Camel’s own goal
Filed under: Cigarette advertising, Uncategorized | Tags: Camel
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Camel’s more recent advertising campaign has celebrated its lethal qualities with primary colours and brand. With the “New Red and Blue” marketing it is back to the simplicity of presenting the product to camera. A man in a checked shirt holds a packet exposing the logo to the camera.
However, it seems that the marketeers have not been following this blog. The strapline “Next Camel Generation” beckons my normal scorn. Has the previous generation succumbed to cancer and heart disease?
Gauloises spring campaign
It is Gauloises’ spring in the cigarette advertising race now on in Germany. Two new posters have appeared, both extolling the virtues of being young, as youth hides the fact that the product is lethal and makes consumers chronically ill. So, exhibit one (left) has a bunch of millennials demonstrating how difficult things are at the moment for them as the can clearly only afford one set of clothes. Hence, in order to wash their clothes, they have to take them off and expose their youth, the women particularly. And because they cannot read (the normal thing to do in a Launderette), they have stolen a shopping trolley in order to play with it, costing me, the supermarket customer, more money because it has to be replaced at some point. Strapline-wise, stuff about being wet and having fun.
Exhibit two (right) is clearly set somewhere warmer than Munich at the moment; but shares 
with its companion poster Millennials’ aversion to clothes. This time, two couples stand on top of a 4×4 with very little on. The light shining through the car windows suggests that they have parked close to an airport runway. They may well have a death wish? Better to be sucked into the engines of a landing airliner than succumb to chronic disease associated with the advertised product. If my hypothesis is wrong and they are actually in Munich, hypothermia will do the same trick for them. Strapline is something about freedom, brotherhood and serenity.
Finally, on the subject of death, Marlboro has come back strong with its You Decide campaign (left). Easy as ever. No!
Yet another fatalist Pall Mall couple
The couples Pall Mall campaign persists across one of only two European tobacco-friendly advertising countries, Germany (the other being Bulgaria, it seems). The latest example is compelling (left). Bearded man holding cigarette, woman with an eye partially closed tugging his hair with the tagline translating as ‘good moments savoured for longer’ (because the sticks themselves are longer than normal). She is really saying, I sense, “stop smoking and shave otherwise…” Before you know it, he’s in the cancer clinic.
Lucky Strike for every bag
Filed under: Cigarette advertising, Uncategorized | Tags: Lucky Strike
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One for the women, maybe? So you are going out all dressed up and fit for an evening of gossip (Tratsch) only to find that your cigarettes will not fit into your clutch bag. What do you do? Thank goodness for Lucky Strike. Those wonderfully innovative people who work there have found a way of making them smaller – or ‘resized’ – perfect for your clutch bag. With added flow filter, of course. Death does not get better than this.
L&M advise on home contents disposal
Filed under: Cigarette advertising, Uncategorized | Tags: L&M
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Well here is the latest L&M advertising masterpiece. Couple sat on the floor in a room with no furniture. An open fire and mantlepiece with a couple of glasses of wine on it have been sketched in using some insipid brown colour for some reason.
It looks to me that the couple have sold all of their possessions in order either to feed their nicotine habit or, as is more likely, they have some terminal illness which means possessions are superfluous. They fondly think about the good times before L&M.
Be informed 
