24 April, 2008 by cigarettes
Camel No. 9 cigarettes will be presented in a package that is hot-pink fuchsia and minty-green teal, with the slogan, “Light and luscious.” The “9” is meant to suggest “dressed to the nines, putting on your best,” Mr. Stebbins said, rather than a perfume. Reynolds, eager to increase the sales of its fast-growing Camel brand among women, is introducing a variety aimed at female smokers. The new variation, Camel No. 9, has a name that evokes women’s fragrances like Chanel No. 19.
Camel No. 9 signals its intended buyers with subtler cues like its colors, a hot-pink fuchsia and a minty-green teal; its slogan, “Light and luscious”; and the flowers that surround the packs in magazine ads. For decades, Camel has been a male-focused cigarette; only about 30 percent of Camel cigarettes buyers are female. By comparison, for competitive brands like Marlboro and Newport cigarettes, women comprise 40 percent to 50 percent of customers. Almost half of adult cigarette smokers are women, so that limited Camel’s potential. Wall Street analysts praise the introduction of Camel No. 9, in regular and menthol flavors, as a further step by the R. J. Reynolds, a unit of Reynolds American, toward a new marketing strategy. The goal is to refocus on the biggest, most popular — and most profitable — brands, which include Kool as well as Camel. R. J. Reynolds sells two cigarette brands, Capri and Misty, aimed at women. A tiny competitor, the Vector Group, sells Eve, and the principal rival to Reynolds, the Altria Group, which owns Philip Morris, pioneered the category in 1968 with the Virginia Slims brand. Virginia Slims, pitched for decades with a campaign that carried the theme “You’ve come a long way, baby,” is the largest cigarette brand directed at women. Research that began early last year found “female adult smokers mostly weren’t Camel smokers,” said Cressida Lozano, vice president for marketing of the Camel brand at Reynolds American in Winston-Salem, N.C., because, they said, “they didn’t feel Camel had a product for them.” Bonnie Herzog, an analyst at Citigroup who follows the tobacco industry, described Reynolds American as “very good at innovation” — bringing out variations of existing brands with new packages, flavors, styles and other twists on familiar offerings. One reason for Reynolds American to introduce the new cigarette as part of the cigarette brand family of Camel, which dates to 1913, is that the many restrictions on marketing cigarettes make it more difficult for an all-new brand name to break through. That is why Camel No. 9 is joining a Camel lineup that includes new cigarettes like Camel Wides, Camel Turkish Gold, Kamel Special Lights and Camel 99s. R. J. Reynolds is working with two of its longtime agencies to introduce Camel No. 9, Agent 16 in New York and Gyro Worldwide in Philadelphia. The company will not disclose spending for the introduction, but estimates range from $25 million to $50 million. Reynolds American will sponsor promotional events for the new Camel in large markets around the country and promote the brand in a variety of other ways, like giving away packs at nightclubs, distributing cents-off coupons and running ads in magazines, including Cosmopolitan, Flaunt, Glamour, Vogue.