Let’s just get this out of the way right here at the beginning; I admire cigarette companies. They effectively sell a product that kills you (albeit slowly) but yet we buy on. That right there is salesmanship, ladies and gents. I don’t care to get into to all the ethical dilemmas, but if you can sell a product that is heavily restricted, taxed, and will eventually kill its customers, and turn a profit every year while doing it, I am ready to come to your headquarters and present you with the Official Biloxi Von Lutz Certificate of Business Merit.
I’m sure it is no cakewalk to market these products of death, but at least now everyone knows they’ll kill you. That makes the job much easier. The burden is no longer on RJ Reynolds to keep you alive, or at least lie to you about what’s killing you. It’s now on you, the consumer, to resist the temptation to kill yourself. That’s a sea change. I think there was even a court case recently that acknowledged that the dangers of smoking were now widely known and accepted, so cigarette makers were no longer liable for your cancer (Jenn’s not online right now, so I can’t verify that). The floodgates are open for a plethora of brilliant marketing campaigns. If I were the marketing director at RJ Reynolds, here’s how I’d sell you some cigs…
It’s often said that for every cigarette you smoke, you knock seven minutes off your life. The logical extension of that statement is that shortening your life by 420 seconds is a bad thing. I disagree. Do you really want to live every moment of your life? For many people, life sucks, especially towards the end. Why not smoke em if you got em? That’s sort of a morbid thought, especially since your life’s probably gonna end with you on oxygen, but that’s kinda beside the point. It’s not how you go out, so long as you go out on top, right?
Joe Camel has no use for conference calls
But what if, what if, you could choose which seven minutes of your life to lop off with each delicious puff of a Camel brand cigarette? Having a bad day at work? Wrap that last hour up in a hurry with eight of our smooth filtered cigarettes. Does your commute suck? There’s no better way to shorten it than to die halfway through. Suck it long and suck it hard. Get 10-15 years for a little B & E? You could be out in as little as three with some help from you new Pen Pal, Pall Mall… See where I’m going with this? The commercials would be hilarious. Here’s a more in depth example:
A guy meets a girl in a bar, and asks her on a date. She agrees to it and the following night they meet up for dinner. Although the girl is extremely attractive, she’s highly annoying to talk to (cut to scene of guy rolling his eyes while girl rambles on in the background). So the guy excuses himself and acts like he needs to use the restroom. He runs outside and chain smokes several cigarettes and when he comes back, time has jumped forward (because he killed himself for those 28 minutes) and he and the girl are headed back to her place for a little extra-curricular activity. Just as things are beginning to heat up in the bedroom, they hear a door open downstairs and the girl exclaims, “Oh no! It’s my husband!” The boy immediately pulls out his Camel brand cigarettes and matching lighter (that he got free with 5 proofs of purchase) and fires one up. In the next scene you see him you see him riding the Camel off into the sunset, a big grin on his face and cigarette hanging out of the side of his mouth. “This isn’t the first time you’ve saved my ass, Joe Camel.”
Now that’s pretty risque material, but cigarettes are made for adults anyway and they’re gonna kill you, why not milk it? But think of the upside, no teenager I’ve ever met wants to wind up in this situation, so they’re discouraged from buying them. Keeping teens off cigarettes is a perennial problem. Once they’ve reached adult status and have been in one or two of these “close calls” with married or taken women, they’ll appreciate the humor of the situation and the indispensable service that the good folks at RJ Reynolds (Now Reynolds American, evidently) are providing you with their sweet sweet menthol flavor.
[...] If I Were the Marketing Director at RJ Reynolds – I thought this was one of my more brilliant pieces. Not gonna lie, I’m a little [...]