Be informed

I wish I was as advanced as the product developers at Marlboro (bottom rigtht) and Lucky Strike (left). Is this the innovation equivalent of vinyl to cassette in the music industry (i.e. not really)? So, there are new filters on the market delivering “a cleaner taste” (Marlboro does not even bother to accommodate the language of the smoker, in this case German) and mildness through a “new flow filter” (Lucky Strike).

It does seem that the designers of the Marlboro poster did not trial it properly. On this example, if the poster is not perfectly pasted on the billboard, it does not matter how advanced the filter, the cigarette itself seems a shade, what can I say, bent. Never mind, advanced cigarettes are just as effective at delivering death as their predecessors.

These are heady times in cigarette advertising campaigns in Germany. I assume this has something to do with the World Cup with its healthy lifestyle promotion of beer, fast food and lethal nicotine dispensers. Clearly, Marlboro has been conceding ground to Lucky Strike on the ‘all American-ness front (see posts under this tag). So, the advertising agencies suggest a relaunch. And here it is, ‘Red’.

It is true that cigarette boxes have always been wonderfully designed, fit-for-purpose, artefacts. Beautifully engineered. I have always found smoking to be pretty repulsive, but the boxes have consistently fascinated me. Largely unchanged for decades. The clean design here is seductive. That I can see. The pinnacle, as I understand it, is when the actual brand does not need to be spelled out.

As reported earlier, Lucky Strike has been promoting previous times before technology when people met and talked over a cigarette. I have reported elsewhere how Lucky Strike’s characters are now into books rather than social networks. Here is another one (right). Pure unadulterated manhood.

But to add a certain confusion, here is the latest. “Luckies kann man nicht selber machen” [one cannot make Luckies by oneself]. When applying the strike-through magic, it becomes “Luckies selber machen” [make your own Luckies]. At first, it looked like a tin of tobacco soup. I realised that was stupid. Actually, it is Lucky Strike going into roll-ups. In a tin. Collectable and beautifully engineered, but let us see how a Lucky Strike roll-up goes down. Watch this space.

Since Marlboro’s controversial Maybe campaign (various examples on this blog), Marlboro has been pursuing a “without additives” approach. Dull if nothing else. Meanwhile Marlboro’s traditional territory, men in farming landscape with cigarettes, seems to have been reoccupied by Lucky Strike. Lucky Strike is still perfecting its strike-through approach (left). So we go from the main point of everything being right (Hauptsache-recht), to everything being real (echt), including the lung cancer.

To save on budget, as I imagine these fantastically clever strike-through slogans must cost a fortune to compose, they are using them twice (right).

Poor old Marlboro. But wait a minute, there is now a fight back (left). It is the Marlboro Frau wearing the lumberjack shirt, in a vehicle in the countryside with added no additives. Take me to the tobacconist.