Camel was the first marketed pre-rolled and packaged cigarette.
An idea conjured by Richard Joshua Reynolds in 1913. The brand owner company still bearing his name; R. J. Reynolds.
Camel was chosen as the brand name and as the advertising figure as the tobacco was based on a Turkish blend.
My interest in the brand have got very little to do with the product.
It's more about the adverticing, how it's been marketed and how it's been received.
For decades Pemberton used every penny he earned on the sale of Coca Cola to further market the brand. And they still use obscene amounts of money to remain the most recognizable brand in the world.
Camel has tried the same approach with different results.
Sometimes because tobacco is still considered more harmfull than sugar.
None the less, as a person that look at almost every advertising with an eye of skepticism, I can't help but admire the work and the ideas that has been put into Camel advertising over the years.
Enter Joe
In the early years a marketing campaign was conducted by using an old Barnum circus camel driven through towns handing out free cigarettes.
The camel was known as "Old Joe", without a doubt the "father" of Joe Camel.
The "new" Joe as we came to know him, although used in European advertising on occasions through the -70's was officially introduced to the 75th anniversary campaign for Camel cigarettes in 1988.
With a local legislative ban on both alcohol and tobacco advertising in Norway as early as 1975 I was, unlike US children, never exposed to Joe in my youth. Point made that my interest is more history than product oriented.
exit joe
I have never seen any of the US TV adverts for Camel.
But as Joe grew he took on a whole life of his own.
Not only was he seen in more and more luxurious settings, but he brought his family, and he formed a band, or a gang, or wherever the other characters were conjured up from.
This is part of what interests me and intrigues me about Camel. How the advertising company took a simple character, brought him to life, created a whole universe for him and made it work in peoples mind.
His success was however to be his demise. By 1991 the American Medical Association reported that more children between the age of 6-10 recognized Joe than both Mickey Mouse and Barbie.
Camel was sued on the grounds of marketing cigarettes to under age consumers, the future base of their sale, and by July 1997 settled out of court and agreed to withdraw Joe Camel from advertising.
beyond Joe
With Joe being "dead and buried" new marketing ideas had to be invented.
Visually pleasing, the Turkish Delight and Pleasure to Burn campaigns never managed to gain the attention brought by Joe.
I'm not sure how it works legally, but companies like Zippo keep making new releases of old designs dating to the pre Joe "death sentence".
