Camel Cigarettes Celebrate 100 Years Of Killing Their Customers

Camel, the smooth tasting, flavoursome and addictive cigarette brand, has unveiled a sleek new advertising campaign to mark its one hundred years in the business of killing its customers.

R.J. Reynolds,  the company behind the product whose sole purpose it is to help cause the deaths of their millions of users excitedly unveiled the new campaign at this year’s annual Liberty Smokers Convention in Winston-Salem, North Carolina.

With the new strapline, “We go the extra mile”, a take on the classic Camel slogan, spokesman for R.J. Reynolds Public Affairs, Executive Vice President Robert H. Dunham, commented on the new campaign and its importance for Camel.

 “We may have survived two world wars, the atom bomb and even the invention of disco, but that doesn’t mean we can become complacent.“

“Our customers expect us to stay at the forefront of promoting the great Camel brand as it helps legitimise what we do as being completely normal and acceptable in a modern, enlightened society.”

 “Our product may just be a cylindrical piece of paper filled with a substance that when ignited produces a chemical reaction causing thousands of carcinogenic and poisonous compounds within the smoke produced to swirl around your mouth before being breathed inside your lungs causing addiction and eventually a complete breakdown of the human body before succumbing to disease and death; but it also so much more than that.  It’s a lifestyle.”

“Much in the same way that Coca-Cola is so much more than just a carbonated drink with vegetable extracts in a can.”

Only days after the launch of the billboard adverts, anti-tobacco protest groups and other stick-in-the-muds have already begun online public campaigns against Camel, calling the images used tasteless and abhorrent, in particular an image which uses the striking image of the World Trade Center in New York, ablaze amid plumes of smoke after an attack in 2001.

The controversial "Smoking Towers" image
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“In defence of the new campaign, Camels success has always come from its willingness to test the waters and try something new and daring, not being afraid to take chances.  These adverts show that, hey guess what, R.J. Reynolds has a sense of humour, we can laugh at ourselves, and we're okay with that – and besides, 9/11 was what, like ten years ago or something.  I think these people really need to examine themselves and start the healing process.”

Additionally, argues Dunham, it won’t be Americans that will be seeing the billboards as the advertising campaign has its sights set clearly on more liberated and freedom loving developing and third world countries, where in stark contrast to developed countries tobacco consumption is increasing year on year by over 3%. 

Using projected figures it is hoped by R.J. Reynolds and other tobacco companies that by 2030, 80% of the estimated 8 million deaths caused annually directly from tobacco use will be in developing and third world countries.

“I mean, those are the kind of figures you just can’t ignore.”

Rwanda is the setting for the series most popular image 
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