Archive for the ‘Travel’ Category
More bearded men
JSP’s summer campaign seems to suggest that it is cool to be a hipster. Two such men take time out to kill themselves (or at least one of them, the other gets it passively). “Always easy going, never boring”, claims the strapline.
Talking about boring, what about Pall Mall (right)?
“tastes superior and longer” – the tobacco sticks seem to be longer in length than those of the competitors. This is a stripped down version of an earlier poster.
L&M for men
L&M has brought back the unshaven man after 3 years (left). Be free, they say AND be an individual, seems to be the strapline. I think the woman on the left needs to be careful, she might find her hair ignited rather than her heart.
Cigarette advertising – Vive death
Filed under: Cigarette advertising | Tags: Gauloises, Lucky Strike, Pall Mall
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Munich’s Laim S-Bahn station is the place to see the most recent billboards featuring cigarette brands. Last night I saw two splendid examples; one for Pall Mall (left) and the other for that oh so French fun brand of death, Gauloises (bellow right). There’s also a Lucky Strike effort (below left).
Pall Mall move away from the Pall Mall sex couple and revert back to selling on the basis of those rather smart packages. The strapline does not translate very well, but let me try ‘way ahead on taste’. How would you know? Better than those coffee flavours by Lucky Strike?
Much more accessible is the Gauloises campaign, Vive le Moment! Here we have a bunch of blokes falling into a pool. Great fun. It’s a warm day, let’s fall into the pool and be cool and cooled. Better to drown than to die of cancer, I guess.
Finally, Lucky strike persists with the strikethrough campaign. “Lots of meaningless advertising” states the original. Strikethrough and you get some more meaningless advertising: “more content”. Yeah. Lethal chemicals. Keep up the good work.
Das Gewitter
35 degrees heat has been imposing itself on central Europeans over the past few days. It is not to my liking as a English bloke from the north used to fog in the middle of summer. I do, however, love a good electrical storm. From a safe distance.
The weatherman on the TV on Friday night promised some activity on this front. First the clouds came over, then a breeze got up. Finally the flashes and thunder. Not a classic, but I did manage to capture a lit-up sky
on my phone. It required a little patience.
Actually tonight, I got some real lightening!
Too hot to smoke
Munich early summer is hot this year. Cigarette advertising is in a bit of a lull. I have to say that collecting these images is getting a bit boring and predictable, but readers predominantly visit this site to see them.
So, Camel is focusing on its colourful “untamed” (since 1913) angle. 
Certainly the camel is iconic and does not need the name to be recognisable. I have no idea how valuable it is as a brand in Germany. Very, I imagine, if these images are anything to go by.
Those pesky railway workers
Filed under: Politics, Privatisation, Railways | Tags: National Express, privatisation, Southern Railway
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The strike by UK rail infrastructure workers scheduled for next week has been called off, but the train operators (private companies using the rail infrastructure) had their plans for dealing with the lack of infrastructure. Obviously, not run trains. But it was worse than that. This was going to be a 24 hour strike straddling two days. Never helpful, but this is industrial action, it is supposed to be disruptive. Starting at 1700 on Monday and finishing 1700 Tuesday. Presumably then, trains will run on or near to 1700 on Tuesday? Er…no. Not worth it, it seems. Trains would have restarted the next full day.
Maybe someone can correct me on this, but it seems on the face of it that the costs associated with restarting train services at 1700 are too high and the key passengers – season ticket holders – were unlikely to have travelled in to London or other principal cities in the UK earlier in the day and would, therefore, be unlikely to need the train home. So the rest of us who might want to use a train for non-work travel can go stuff ourselves.
It is easy to say that pre-privatisation (1994) it would have been inconceivable that the trains would not recommence after the ending of strike action. This really does seem to be a case of profit coming first.
Incidentally, I will arrive at Gatwick Airport at 1800 on Tuesday with a view to getting back home on the South Coast. I checked nearby hotels and airport parking. Extortionate. £140 pounds to park at Gatwick. These organisations seem to have had a service bypass!
The one unexpected good business was National Express which planned to put on extra coaches to cater for the stranded passengers at not-inflated prices from what I could see. Top marks. I’ll remember that.
JPS and those beautiful people
John Player Special is back on the streets in Germany with this oh-so-cool image of man and woman in a vintage convertible. The spirit of freedom comes through the tagline ‘always free, never pointless’. No, there is a real point to smoking. Never pointless, addictive and lethal. 
Meanwhile, Lucky Strike continues the case for tobacco as coffee (right). This time the strike-out of the text changes the meaning from being unapologetic or maybe audacious about the different taste to three (packets) that taste different (because of where the tobacco was grown). Get me the ad agency’s number!
Tobacco is now like coffee
Those of us who drink coffee do so with some idea about where it is grown and the kind of flavour that one can expect as a result. Some is fair trade, even.
Well here is the latest from Lucky Strike’s strike out campaign that attempts to move the brand to one of taste related to where the tobacco is grown. So, in the middle is the good old USA. Left, Columbia. Right, Brazil.
Surely next is not fair trade tobacco?
Lucky Strike strikes another hit in its strike-through campaign
Back on the streets of Munich roars Lucky Strike with its strike-through cod cleverness. The pointless statement (left) “Einheitsgeschmack” translated as uniform taste (there are three varieties to choose from) is shortened to “Geschmack”, merely taste.
The cigarette machines offer additional opportunities for state-of-the-art advertising (right). “Ich hab meine Zigaretten mehr” translates as I have more cigarettes, becomes one cigarette more (customers get one extra free, seemingly). What an amazing brand!
Spring cigarette advertising campaigns in Germany
Filed under: Cigarette advertising | Tags: Camel, Gauloises, Pall Mall
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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.
Be informed 