Anne Landman's Collection
Camel Brainstorming. Camel Heritage.
Abstract
This 20-page treatise on the philosophy and symbolism of the Camel pack discusses the psychological symbolism of each of the visual elements on the pack, and their effect on consumers. It states, "...the very idea of putting philosophy...on something commercial and commonplace...is shocking...R.J. Reynolds, a consumer products company, dared in 1914 to offer the American people a piece of philosophy, while pretending to merely be selling cigarettes." [Page 16 "Camel Heritage."] The phallic symbolism is touched on briefly, as are the themes of independence, rebellion, self-sufficiency, serenity, etc.
The document was apparently written by an advertising agency working for R.J. Reynolds. It makes clear the value to marketing of cigarette logos and brand identification. It also indicates that a measure requiring plain packaging for all brands of cigarettes could be a potent public health policy.
Fields
- Quotes
[From Page 11]
This camel, though stately in its solitude, has to be viewed as homely and stolid. It has an ugly face with a long snout and a long neck, a hump, and hooves for feet. (Only a passing thought to the possible interpretation of the Camel as phallic imagery. The Camel's head and neck could be thought of this way)...
..It follows that there is some level of identification of the cigarette buyer with the symbol of the Camel. We're tipped off that this is not a beast of burden. It is not strapped with a fancy Egyptian saddle. No sheiks of princesses in harem pants are on the scene. That the camel is atypically loose, wandering unburdened is an additional psychological identifier for the viewer...
[From Page 14]:
The Camel pack is a world microcosm, a story being told about man with relation to his universe...The subconscious interpretation of the pack is made as follows: an independent, but humble creature encounters his past and future possibilities on a desert -- suggesting that he is experiencing some sort of epiphany -- and this encounter is peaceful and posibive.
[Page 15]:
...Camel YAS [young adult smokers] may be macho, but they've got a screw loose somewhere. They're different in that they need to reflect, or examine. They're different than their peers (for whatever reason l they probalby don't know why themselves which is precisely why they need some form of rebellion) and though their masculinity is secure, they are unfulfilled....
- Company
- R.J. Reynolds
- Type
- REPORT
- Named Person
- RJR
- Liggett
- Lorillard
- American
- Schinasi
- Larus Bros
- Leigh Cheri
- Argon
- B&W
- Philip Morris
- Robbins, Tom (author)
- Liggett
- Subject
- marketing
- brand image
- Brand Name
- brand image
Document Images
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SITUATION
Client and Agency are aware that the Original packaging
of CAMEL cigarettes has an unexplained, mystique.
The uniquely-designed package has deve'loped its own
trad it ion, or heritage, f,= this myst ique. Further,
the cigarette currently enjoys a market share on the
West Coast startlingly higher than national market share.
Both Client and Agency are looking for Ways to capitalize
on the Camel package mystique and its West Coast phenomena
and for further explanations of the meaning of the Camel
pack. Some ideas are presented here.
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PACKAGING HISTORY
Camel cigarettes, 72 years old, was set apart at its
origination by its packaging.
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Before Camel was introduced in 1914, there were other
Turkish tobacco products and Turkish image cigarettes.
They were called Fatima, Omar, Mecca, and by 1903 they
lsad 25% of the msrket. As can be viewed from their
packaging, they played up the image of exotica with
Har~em girls and the minarets of I'Mecca.l'
But in 1914 R.J. Reynolds mixed his successful Prince
Albert tobacco formula into a cigarette with Turkish,
Burley and Bright leaves. He introduced it with a
$1,500,000 ad campaign that announced "The Camels Are
Comingl"# a campaign that took immediate advantage of
the persona of the Camel. By1918 Camel had 40%-of the
tsat ion's cigarette bus iness. 1
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In the beginning Camel looked different than the other
Turkish cigarettes, the focus being on 'the animal, not on
the exotic Eastern trappings. Camel still looks different.
In 1958 there was an attempt to redesign the package; to
modernize it. The public and R.J. Reynolds, Jr. protested
to such an extent the package was reverted to the original. 2
1. Goodbye To A 11 That, Harris Lewine,,McGraw-Hill, 1970, pp32-34 "
2. Still Life With Woodpecker, Tom Robbins, Bantam Books, 1984,
= p 182
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EXCEPTIONAL QUAUTY
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Cigar store Indians went Turkish; Potentates "potentated"; Harem beauties re
clined; and cigarette ads ranged from Murad's "He Nonchalant" to Fuiima's "De
Sensible." fly 1903 the Turkish cigarette boom had swept 25"/% of the market. These
smokes were all-Turkish or Balkan leaf, shorter and fatter, some ovuled, and mostly
hand-rolled. American Tobacco got In step and broadened its lines with the Turkish-
TJirginia blends of Fatima and Mecca-ten for a nickel; a more expensive all-Turkis6
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smoke, Murud-ten for fifteen and later twenty cents; and Omur.
Turkish blend at twenty for fifteen cenls. Furimu wcnt tu,Lit;4rt1
fbturad to Lorillard in the 1912 breakup uf the American Tobacco 1,111
subsidiary, Schinasi, sold the straight Turkish Gi;yptiun Prettiest at Itti.
6ve cents. Lorillard's Mogul was straight Egyptian at the same price.
50688 0626
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benC TaasrextoQ
(Clockwise) "Tomorrow there'll be more CAMELS In this town than in all Asia and
Africa combinedl" R. J. Reynolds launched Camels in 1914 and began Ihe era of the
standard brands. Lorillard's Old Cold quickly established a share of the market in
1920 with its "Blindfold Test" campaigns. Lucky Strike, American's Burley blend,
came out in 1917 and within the year had an 11% share of the market. Original
Herbert Tareyton package dates from 1913 and was a Bright blend, no Burley.
50688 O5Z
In the summer of '31 Russ Columbo was siqging Please, and Lucky Sl
"O.K. America." "Please" won out. Flue-cured leaf dropped from
pound and Burley 256 to 11t. Tobacco was not "depression-proof" ai
appeared. Larus Brothers. Richmond, brought out INhite Rolls. Phil
duced Paul Jones-"America... Here's your cigarette-20 for 10e." I
liamson reduced the price on Wings, and orders couldn't be filled fa:
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CAMEL IMAGE -- CAMEL HERITAGE
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To get at Camel heritage we need to explain what the packaging
stood for in the first place, the nature of its "authentic"
experience' and why it continues to lure.
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the cigarette's image of being an "authentic" if powerful
-=" -:that of being a pure, unmitagated tobacco experience.
-- Despite the negat ives this may imply today, it speaks to
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The Camel nonf ilter product has the image of being an
"authentic" cigarette. The Camel smoking_ image is
- = = experience.
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=~PaclcaQin~ t
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-The feel 'of the ciga'rette was translated into the packaging.
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-_ This is the coaumuiications device that' is interpreting the
: product experience over and over again~to the consumer. The
- packaging, then, is what is driving home the point of the
. desirous.Camel experience or message. , -
- We need to know what that experience or message is so we can
recreate it.
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Her= -
Heritage is the continuation of what something stood for
or ig ina l ly.
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THE PACIU1 GE
The package is comprised of few simple design elements:
1.) The Camel
2.) Stylized logotype with silver filling
3. ). Columns framing the images
4.) Copy set in an old-fashioned, easy-to-read typeface
5. ) Two pyramids, one in the foreground, one farther away
6. ) Desert
7.) Palm trees -
8.) Empty sky -
9.) Back of package: minarets, towers, palm trees at a
settlement in the desert
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The colors of the package are a blending of earth and desert
tones. on a cream-colored sky.
All images are austere. Yet they are images of objects
foreign to the eye of American purchas®rs. Most Americans
do not normally see camels, pyramida, desert or minarets in
day-to-day l if e.
The one bold, comprehensible image is the earth-colored camel.
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ITS IMPA CT
The simple, elegant rendering of creature and objects is a
presentation of the world. It is a siinplification of it
and an ordering of it.
The objects selected for the package are first of all, unusual.
Secondly, they are presented in a most pared-down light, as if
to make them as accessible as possible. The images, and their
primitive simplicity very much resemble the images of mythology,
the depersonalized dreams of a culture.
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Thirdly, the relationship of the package images to each other
is in perfect balance. The eye is immediately attracted not
only to these clearlydefined objects,,but to their spatial
relationship to each other. Framed within the brown columns,
the objects form their own perfect little world:- sand, camel,
tree, pyramid, sky, Camel logo. --
Essentially, it's a microcosm. It's a,snapshot from another
time, another place that one can purchase and hold in one's
hand. The Camel package seems like a message from the past,
t ime stopped in a' perf ect ly ba lanced microcosm.
The Camel pack is telling a story of some kind. The story is
about this creature, the Camel, and hia relationship to his
world. This is a presumption the mind;must make on a subconscious
level by even the moat casual viewer. ~-
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ITS MEANING
The package performs a mental process for us. It presents a
world and is of necessity interpreting!that world. It puts
forth life as art, using representations of real life. The
package is then, wise, since it is showing us its own vision
of a miniature world. ;
By using the simplest kind of art, line art, and just a few
objects of art to tell its story with,; it interprets life by
the reduction of objects and creature to their most elemental
nature. And, of course, the subject matter itself is elemental:
sand, pyramid, sky and only two life forms, the Camel and trees
(minarets, on the package back play distantly in importance).
It puts the animal alone within the half-living stillness of
his environment.
The package offers us symbols. The most intellectually primitive
consumer must subconsciously register that something is going on
on this package...that a story is being told:
T=pro_
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1.) Sees package,not even noticing the speci_fic images
2.) Flashes on solemnity and general oddness of package. But
also perceives overall perfectionLof images and perfect
spacial relationship of objects within small square package.
3.) Thinks subconsciously, "Weird little package. But it's
beaut iful. 00 ;
4. Buys cigarettes and forgets what he/she saw
5.~ Associations are made. Repurchase occurs without thinking
about it.
And, even though the subject matter of ',the package is serious,
it could have been brightly-colored ori~comically drawn so ms not
to cause any disturbance in the mind of the viewer.
fThe entire premise of the pack is to create a subconscious
disturbance, even if it's only a ripple. This is all it takes
for art, or packaging in this case, to work. This is a major
fa.ctor in Camel heritage -- the spell it puts over the viewer.
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he images slow one down. The Camel, shaded and colored, is
the object that is meant to be real in'this dreamlike landscape.
Everything else, represented as pure line art and lightly-colored,
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can be the Camel's mirage or our mirage. They are mythic,
dreamlike visions that seem to exist,more in the mind than
in reality. They are symbolic.
And the very fact that the package is;Mise enough to show us
these symbols implies that the package has a life of its own,
a mind of its os,m. I
Thus, the following statement by Tom Robbins from Still Life
kith Woodpecker, a novel all about the power of the Camel
cigarette package. From page 169: ;
Yet, as any half-awake material-
ist well knows, that which you hold holds you. Nei-
ther could the earth escape the moon. Tbe moon con-
ducts our orchestra of waters, it is keeper at the hive
of blood. In a magnetic field, every object exerts force
on every other object. The moon is an object, after all.
Like a golden ball. Like a pack of cigarette&
The fabric of even those objects that' seem densest
is, in actual fact, a loose weaving of particles and
waves. The differences and interactions between ob-
jects have their roots in the interference patterns pro-
duced along combined frequencies of vibration. What
it amounted to was that Leigh-Cheri Iwas exerting
force on the Camel pack. And it on her. Surely, such
force had to do with the physical nature of the pack-its
size, weight, shape, chemical composition, and, above
all, prozi.mity--and not with the pictorial content that
adorned it. Ah, but pictorial symbols havb their own
weight and grivity, as the history of religion vividly
demonstrates, and while Leigh-Cheri found herself in
a relationship with the Camel pack as an object, just
as she was in relation to the moon as an object (just as
you, reader, have a relationship with this book as an
object, no matter if you can tolerate another line of its
content), she deciphered from the symbology of the
Camel pack design what appeared to be the long-lost
message from the redheads of Argon.
: That might have been the major discovery of the
last quarter of the twentieth century./
