Archive for the ‘Camel’ Tag
The state of cigarette advertising in Germany
Filed under: Cigarette advertising | Tags: Burton cigarettes, Camel, Lucky Strike, Winston
Leave a comment This blog draws many readers from searches for cigarette advertising. I have absolutely no idea why people search for cigarette advertising, but they do, and some of my poster snaps have been used by others for all sorts of purposes. Certainly since the pandemic – and perhaps more significantly, the growing importance of e-cigarettes and standard packaging with images of diseased lungs – I’ve been starved of content; and the advertising there has been, seems a shade unimaginative.
Take, for example, Winston (left). The end of the packet is shown to avoid the unpleasant images and also to show how fat is the packet, housing as it does enough cigarettes to kill an elephant. There is an inexplicable link made between the number of cigarettes, taste (grosser geschmack) and value (for money). Not much of a narrative. Winston is an ITG brand in the USA (Imperial tobacco) and is a subsidiary of Japan Tobacco in the rest of the world.
Burton goes for a similar approach, though these are selected by smokers because they are “your [killer] cigarette”. I was not previously aware of Burton cigarettes, but according to cigarettespedia (goodness, an encyclopaedia of cigarettes, soon no reason to come to this site at all), it is a Greek and German brand owned by Tabak House. Seemingly, the brand goes for cheap, and appeals to young people. The taste is, therefore, not really an issue. The nicotine is perhaps more important.
It is not all despair, though. Camel is persisting with its primary colours approach with a touch of marketing brilliance (only joking). These sticks are extra long and therefore extra enjoyable. The subtlety of the slogan doesn’t really translate. It it reflexive, which means the cigarettes enjoy themselves being extra long as well as the smoker? Why do I care?
Also back on the high street is Lucky Strike (Luckies). Of course, this advertising campaign is trying to convince someone that cigarettes are green. The filters here are made of paper (rather than cork?), so that is alright then. Strangely, consumers are advised to put the used filters in the regular waste rather than the recycling bin!
And finally, something I have not reported on before (because it is not common in Germany), is loose rolling tobacco. Spirit with Character, whatever that is supposed to mean attached to a product that has known lethal properties, is certainly attractive in packaging terms. American Spirit has been in all sorts of bother over the years in the US. The Truth Initiative reports that the brand has convinced its customers that the product is less-harmful than competitor products because it is organic. But ironically, the organic claim may well contribute to the product being more harmful than competitor brands with more nicotine by means of “more puffs per cigarette”. Hawk-eyed readers may also consider the use of a representation of a native American to sell a distinctly western capitalist product to be at best unsavoury. The brand is owned by Reynolds American, a subsidiary of British American Tobacco.
Summer 2019 cigarette advertising, Germany
Filed under: Cigarette advertising, JSP | Tags: Camel, JPS, Winston
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The current crop of cigarette billboards in Germany are interesting. JPS continues its “death is better value than you might think” campaign (left, apologies about the shadow; confirms it is summer, I suppose). JPS is a curious brand that seems not really to know what it stands for. For example, elsewhere in this blog are examples of JPS and young creative people as well as JPS innovative packaging.
Then there is Winston. Not a regular high-street advertiser, but when it is there, one wonders about the
campaign managers. The latest, “for short journeys, for long journeys” is particularly fatuous. That aside, the packaging now carrying acute warnings about the effects of smoking on health seems to suggest that blindness is a badge of honour. Maybe, another interpretation from the one probably meant, blindness is the short journey and the longer journey is death? Especially if one goes for the bargain 36 cigarettes for 10 Euros?
By contrast, Camel persists with the primary colours campaign (seemingly the “Let’s Camel” campaign) and has moved away from the “Do your thing” nonsense. So, Camel eschews the health impacts by focusing on the top of the package. The tagline seems pretty meaningless “spontaneously simply ride into the blue” – rather literal, I know, but it sometimes works with German. In line with Winston and JPS, there are 35 cigarettes for a tenner.
I found another example of this campaign on one of those circular billboards which
point out to the road. These can be hazardous to photograph for obvious reasons.
So this one (right) tells us that it really really tastes good. Having never smoked, I cannot vouch one way or the other for this claim. It is still deadly. Echt!
Camel tries to make its people more palatable?
Filed under: Cigarette advertising | Tags: Camel, Do your thing
Leave a comment I have 
been reporting that Camel’s “Do your Thing” campaign was all about putting some of the most unpleasant looking people on a poster smoking a cigarette – or threatening to. The campaign slogan could just as well have been “bollocks to you”.
The latest that I have found seems to be softening that with a woman sporting flowing long hair and who is either vigorously shaking her head or being confronted by a wind machine. Either way, “smoking is deadly” as the warning at the bottom maintains.
Cigarette advertising blooming like summer flowers
Filed under: Cigarette advertising | Tags: Camel, Lucky Strike, Pall Mall
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It is true, I did say it was quiet, not much doing on the cigarette advertising advertising front. Anything but, now. First up Camel (left). Sticking with the “Do your Thing” strapline here we have two relatively young people with (unlit) cigarettes in their mouths (always an unattractive image, surely?) doing their own thing. In line with the campaign more widely – and there are many examples elsewhere in this blog – the messa
ge is “Fuck off”?
Next up, Pall Mall is back with some fantastic tosh. Take “New Neighbour, New Friend” (right) as part of the “Enjoy the moment” campaign. How nice, meet on the balcony and be introduced by sharing a death stick. Most people do the introductions safely using an intermediary, such as a dog or cat.
Same campaign, same nonsense. Sorry about this one, it has been literally defaced, but none the worse for it. Strapli
ne is very clever: boring short holiday or long-time short holiday. I do not know whether this a a play on the old British saying that I know confuses German speakers. “What did you do on your holiday?” We did nothing”. “Great!” “How can doing nothing be anything but boring?” “Is doing nothing good?”
Finally, (un)Lucky Strike is back (right). Now this one is truly bizarre. And it is almost in line with the Pall Mall neighbours above. The innovation here is that the cigarettes are brown. Not great, I would ha
ve thought, but there you go. But added to that, there is now a Luck Strike dating app, “Cigarillo”, presumably for people with a death wish?
“Flaschendrehen trifft”, by my translation, is something like “meet by spinning the bottle”. Random? But to make it even stranger, if one looks at the packet with the “cigarettes are deadly” warning on the white block, one finds, “Wollen sie aufhören?” – “Do you want to stop smoking?” Mixed messages, at the very least.
Camel and white nationalism?
Cam
el’s Do Your Thing campaign is back. Apologies about the picture, but a sunny day and poster is stuck behind plastic. Not great for photography.
The approach is the same, however. Person with attitude looks to camera to say, “look at me, I don’t care about your or me, for that matter”. Curious approach to promoting the brand. What always seemed to me to express some kind of exoticism now seems to promote white nationalism!
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!
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.
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?
Be informed 