Camel Singer

A powerfully thematic ad that stands out in my mind is when Joe Cool Camel is placed on a Harley Davidson motorcycle. Joe is dressed head to toe in biker gear wearing a traditional motorcycle jacket, T-shirt, jeans and black sunglasses. While posing in this tough guy gear, Joe is sitting on the bike smoking a slick cigarette for pure rebellious enjoyment, symbolizing the epitome of a bad boy image. This ad is strategically enduring to teens in that again, they look up to icons that look tough, self-confident, and rebellious because they want to be what that image represents. Camel Cigarettes target this insecurity of teens and in the process they reel them in to smoke cigarettes. Rock and Roll music is most popular among the teenage group. They admire bands for their rough image, style and music. R.J. Reynolds focuses on this phenomenon by creating an ad where Joe Camel features as a rock star. He is place on stage in the spotlight, smoking a cigarette while playing the guitar. The fans are faded in the background, cheering this stud-camel on for his great music. This ad is appealing to the teenage audience because it displays Joe Camel as an icon, a role model that fans adore from their assigned seats at a concert hall. When teens observe this ad, perhaps they will think if the image of Joe Camel looks cool smoking on stage, than they will look cool if they do it too.

Camel sexy

The camel in the logo is of the dromedary variety. In other languages than English, a distinction is made between camels and dromedaries, so the name and image don't coincide. The name was chosen because in the early 20th century travels to far away places were in vogue and a camel symbolised that nicely. The package artwork was used by rock band Camel for their second album Mirage (including the package sides to make for a square image). The Camel pack is featured prominently in Tom Robbins novel Still Life with Woodpecker, billed as "a love story that happens inside a pack of cigarettes."

Camel Biliard

Camel is a brand of cigarettes introduced by U.S. company R.J. Reynolds Tobacco (RJR) in 1913. Camels contain a blend of Turkish and United States tobacco. Camel cigarettes were blended to be considerably easier to smoke in contrast to the much harsher brands popular at the time of its introduction. In addition, they were promoted, prior to official release, by a careful advertising campaign that included "teasers" which merely stated that "the Camels are coming." This marketing style was, in fact, a prototype for attempts to sway public opinion that coincided with the United States' entry into the First World War. Another promotion strategy was the use of a Circus camel, 'Old Joe', which was driven through town and used to distribute free cigarettes. Old Joe was used as the model for the camel on the package. The brand's catch-phrase slogan, used for decades, was, "I'd walk a mile for a Camel!" The most famous variety of Camel cigarettes was the soft pack of the regular, unfiltered variety. Camel regulars achieved the zenith of their popularity through personalities such as news broadcaster Edward R. Murrow, who smoked up to four packs of Camel regulars per day, in effect using a Camel cigarette as his trademark. In late 1987, RJR created Joe Camel as the mascot for the brand. In 1991, the American Medical Association published a report stating that 5- and 6-year olds could more easily recognize Joe Camel than Mickey Mouse, Fred Flintstone, Bugs Bunny or even Barbie. This led the association to ask RJR to pull the Joe Camel campaign. RJR declined, but further appeals followed in 1993 and 1994. On July 10, 1997, the Joe Camel campaign was retired and replaced with a somewhat more adult campaign which appealed to the desires of twenty-somethings to meet or as the case may be, actually be beautiful and exotic women (desires they nonetheless share with teenagers) in 1930s attire and themes. In 2005, Camel instigated new changes to the Turkish flavors by adding the name on the cigarette paper and changing the filter color and design. A blend called "Turkish Silver", a light version of either the Turkish Gold or Royal varieties, also became available that year. When smoked, the text on the paper is often still visible on the ashes. Winston-Salem, North Carolina, the city where R.J.R. was founded, was nicknamed "Camel City" at one time because of the brand's popularity. However, this name is passing out of usage among locals.

Camel Cigarettes Ads

Here we have a pair of specially commissioned Camel packs. They belong ôo a set of seven, four of which are illustrated in this section (can readers help the author to obtain copies of the other three?). From top to bottom (no pun intended) one can note that the 'hidden' sexual theme associated with Camel Cigarettes is still apparent. The two packs illustrated above appear to be simple variations on the standard Camel pack. This has been reputed to contain a manikin with an erection and various other images. For the manikin, see the Camel's foreleg. This assertion has been discounted a number of times by R.J.Reynolds and others associated with the company. However, it is rather strange that this figure can still be discerned after many years of pack alterations. If it was not intended to be there, and some people find it offensive, then it need not be there. In fact if one views the book Camel cigarette collectibles by Douglas Congdon-Martin, the figure that isn't supposed to exist has become slightly more obvious over the years, rather than less so. On the right is the Camel Filters Hard Pack (as sold in Mexico, 2000). Note that the colouring is markedly different from the illustration on the left (and other versions of the cigarette pack). Yet all show, to some degree or other the manikin and his 'penis'. The pack, in fact, highlights the appendage against a lighter background. Additionally, the author has an ad produced around the same time Camel Cigarettes first appeared. This also would seem to contain embedded elements. The brand is not Camel but the use of the same type of embedding technique early this century would indicate general knowledge within ad companies producing ads for the tobacco industry at this time. Additionally one might note that the American artist Winslow Homer was rather renowned for embedding images in his work (see Winston Homer, the Obtuse Bard). His work may have been the inspiration for some interesting ads during this early period of cigarette advertising.

The third pack shows the Camel logo made up from rather fluffy clouds. Embedded in the clouds are the letters S E X.

Camel Hopes Design Change Will Pack A Lot Of Punch

At a time when the cigarette industry is under greater scrutiny than ever, R.J. Reynolds is drawing on its limited arsenal to attempt to boost sales.

Last week, RJR gave its iconic Camel brand its first major package redo in 90 years and is adding more premium tobacco to all base brand flavors except menthol. The move is a bold one in a category where such mainstay cigarette brands have changed little since their debuts.

Separately, Camel is testing Camel Crush. The product, described as a "menthol-on-demand cigarette," is a Camel Light cigarette with a capsule in the filter containing menthol. A smoker squeezes the filter to break the capsule. They hear a click and know that the gelatin capsule has broken to release the menthol inside. The smoker can customize the smoke when they first light up, just before they finish or whenever. Tag for supporting marketing will be: "Squeeze. Click. Change."

Brian Stebbins, senior business unit director at R.J. Reynolds, Winston-Salem, N.C., said the packaging change was made because, "As we understand consumers better, every product evolves with refinements here and there. Yet when you look at this category, the cigarette business has changed nothing. [Cigarette] products are rarely reformulated.

For the upgrade, RJR drew on surveys of smokers who said they liked the new packaging, a more contemporary look that keeps recognizable icons of the company's biggest brand.

Scott Lucas, executive director at Interbrand, Cincinnati, said because of limited marketing avenues, cigarette companies have to step it up with their packaging.

"Packaging is really the front line for these guys when once they were the pioneers of advertising," he said. "Now they have to pioneer this front line."

Stebbins, however, said he was aware of the risk of changing up packaging: "When you attempt to make something better, you first and foremost have to make sure that the [consumer] who buys your product everyday already sees the difference in your brand and appreciates it."

The efforts come as sales of the full-flavored, filtered Camel have been flat for two years. But thanks to extensions like female-skewing No. 9, Signature and Camel Wides, Camel overall ended last year with 7.1% market share versus 6.6% in 2006, per the Maxwell Report, Richmond, Va.

With the relaunch, RJR is discontinuing nine slow sellers, leaving Camel with 26 SKUs.

Camel Filter 99 and Light 99 will succeed some of those products. That could help profit margins; they are slightly shorter cigarettes priced the same as a regular stick.

Trading smokes for snus may be a safer bet

In the tobacco family, chew and dip are considered the country cousins. When they visit, a murky cup of tobacco juice soon follows.

So it may be a surprise to learn of the Swedish relatives. A neater smokeless tobacco that comes in a small tea bag and doesn't require spitting, tobacco companies say. It arrived in local Sheetz stations last summer. Its name is snus.

Like all American tobacco, snus (pronounced "snoose") carries a warning -- "may cause mouth cancer" or "not a safe alternative to cigarettes." It's a reminder of the hazards linked to tobacco, from stained teeth to terminal illness.

Except researchers say that snus is a safer choice than cigarettes. Replacing smokes with this Swedish export, they claim, reduces the health risks of lighting up.

"In an ideal world, every smoker would just simply quit using tobacco," said Dr. Brad Rodu, a professor of medicine at the University of Louisville who has studied smokeless tobacco for the past 15 years. But that goal is often too hard, he said, and noted just a 5 percent success rate among the 30 million or so American smokers who try to quit each year.

Rodu, whose work was partly funded by unrestricted grants from two smokeless tobacco companies, wants smokers to know their options for "harm reduction" -- beyond high-priced drug store options such as nicotine gum and patches.

So, snus. It means "snuff" in its native Sweden, a country that supporters point to as evidence that snus is safer tobacco.

Swedes consume the majority of their tobacco as snus and tobacco-related deaths there are among the lowest in the developed world, a pair of researchers at Australia's University of Queensland wrote in the journal PLoS Medicine in July.

Snus-ers face a lower risk of cardiovascular disease than smokers, they reported. And snus, which is pasteurized, is much lower in nitrosamines -- the main cancer-causing agents in smokeless tobacco -- than more popular forms of chew and dip used in the United States, which are fermented.

"We think it would be good public health policy to encourage inveterate smokers to adopt less harmful ways of using nicotine," the Australian researchers, Coral Gartner and Wayne Hall, concluded.

But "this is a tobacco product. There is no safe tobacco product," said David Howard, a spokesman for R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Co., maker of the Camel brand snus that has been sold in Sheetz gas stations since July.

Snus critics worry that Sweden's results won't translate to other countries. They point out that Camel markets snus to be used along with cigarettes, not as a replacement, with slogans such as "When you can't smoke, snus."

"There is no suggestion of stopping smoking," Simon Chapman and Becky Freeman of the University of Sydney wrote in a response to their colleagues in Queensland.

In February, a European Union health panel ruled that snus hasn't been proved to help people quit smoking. The American Cancer Society takes that stance, too. Concerns about the hazards of smokeless tobacco, which include cancer of the mouth, have led to a ban on snus in Australia and the EU, except Sweden.

Snus hasn't appeared at downtown Roanoke's Milan Tobacconists, where boxes of cigars and pipes line the shelves. But last week, co-owner David Meyer considered a tin of snus that a reporter brought by.

"I don't think anti-smokers will say, 'Oh yeah, this is a great product,' " Meyer said. But he added, "From a logical standpoint, if you're not inhaling smoke into your lungs, you're better off."

Camel Cigarette Phone Probably Won't Fool Anyone

If you are one of the 598 landline-only Giz readers, you should probably hide your embarrassing lack of technology. This US$49 touchtone phone disguises your relic as a pack of death sticks. It looks accurate, but your bluff will probably be called when people notice that it's connected to the wall or remember you don't actually smoke. And that you're talking to your cigarettes.