Smokers turn to geography

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It's interesting to see at the moment that cigarette companies seem to be turning to geography to help market their products in Germany.

Camel is using advertising it's brand on Bus stops (see left, ignore reflections) using a tactic reminiscent of Multimap's advertising in the UK a few years back which made street patterns in London into shopping trolleys, computer mice, etc. In this case Camel have made a camel shape out of the streets and pen annotations on the map.

Meanwhile, Marlboro are advertising the chance of winning some cool looking new GPS navigation devices. Shame I don't smoke, it'd be nice to have one of those things.

I wonder what the sudden attraction to geography is for the tobacco companies? Is it things like Google Earth that have made their customers more aware and more receptive to maps and location?

Posted in Geographic at 12:16 PM on Thursday 4 May 2006
Tags: geo cigarettes tobacco gps maps

Comments

If German consumer law is the same as in the UK, then "no purchase necessary" in order to win the Marlboro Challenge. Go for it! :D

Posted by: MQ at May 12, 2006 9:25 AM

Interesting - now only if I could find one of those ads still posted somewhere to find out where to write to, and what I'd need to do.

Posted by: Dan Karran at May 12, 2006 1:03 PM

Actually it looks like it's a chance to win one of 20 places on a team which will be flown out to Utah to complete a GPS challenge.

For a chance to be on the team you have to dial 0800 MARLBORO (within Germany) - I'm sure they speak English - and they send an application form.

Can't yet find out whether any smoking is involved... it is rumoured but only rumoured so far. Apart from which I don't think smokers would last long running round the desert in Utah... ironically enough.

Make sure you post details of how you get on with the application!

Posted by: MQ at May 12, 2006 11:22 PM