Archive for the ‘JSP’ Tag
At last, something to smoke
Filed under: Cigarette advertising | Tags: Down to Earth, JSP, West
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It has been a quiet time on the cigarette advertising front. Those halcyon days of the Gauloises couple in the bath and the Pall Mall happy couples through the seasons. seem to have left us. The only narrative advertising at the moment is JPS (latest left). It’s couples again, one female, one male smoking, the other two watching them kill themselves. This time we are stuck in a queue on a dirt track of some description in Germany (check out the number plate); though there is some bunting on the side and a small roadside tent to suggest this is some festival thing. They have a cool box being
used as a seat.
That is genius in comparison to West’s latest advertising. In-your-face West (right). Pretty meaningless. “Gute Aussichten- Top Preis” Good view/outlook? This is all about price, though. 35 fags for 9 Euros. Red or silver. Made for good times, apparently.
And then there is…Down to Earth rolling tobacco. New up on billboards – though this one of an evening is obscured by a blue van. The campaign approach is not to disguise the harmful effects of tabacco; indeed, quite the opposite. They seem to be proud of their product’s contraceptive properties. Or even its carcinogenic qualities.
Thanks to Wikipedia for the following historical background to the product:
The company was founded in 1982 by Bill Drake, author of The Cultivators Handbook of Natural Tobacco, Robert Marion, Chris Webster, and Eb Wicks, a plumbing contractor who took out a loan to finance the startup. In January 2002 the company was acquired by Reynolds American and is now a wholly owned independent subsidiary of Reynolds American, which is in turn 42% owned by British American Tobacco. Japan Tobacco announced in September 2015 that it acquired the right to sell Natural American Spirit products in markets outside the United States.
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?
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.
Filtered French chic
Filed under: Cigarette advertising | Tags: Gauloises, JSP, Lucky Strike
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It’s all in the filters at the moment. The delivery of carcinogens to willing humans takes great scientific endeavour. The current JSP campaign in Germany leads on this and takes on Lucky Strike and Marlboro whose new filter, Advance, is advertised to build anticipation as if it was a Star Wars film (“Are you ready for Advance?).
I apologise for the poor quality of this picture – it was taken at night across a railway platform. However, “Qualität die sich lassen kann” loosely translates as “allow yourself quality” coupled with “Jetzt mit festerem Filter” earns the ad agency its fee. And the smoker cancer.
Thank goodness, then, for the creativity of Gauloises’ ad agency. Vive le 
Moment has the obligatory bearded man in a tuxedo, stylishly arriving at some gig with his bicycle slung over his shoulder (easier to ride, I would have thought). “Enzigartiger Stil, grossartiger geschmack. Meine Wahl” reads as “Unique style, great taste. My choice”. How clever is that; I mean, what a fantastic play on the concept of style? So cool.
By the way, just behind the door is the Grim Reaper.
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.
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!
Be informed 