Camel camel
The camel camel is an advertising character for Camel brand cigarettes .
It was conceived by Richard Joshua Reynolds in Winston-Salem , North Carolina , in 1913 , when he brought one of the first ready-made cigarettes onto the market in the USA and was looking for a brand name and a symbol that could be associated with the Orient. He chose the combination of pyramids, palm trees and a single-humped dromedary .
The archetype of this composition, which has hardly changed to this day, was the photograph of a dromedary named Old Joe , which belonged to the Barnum and Bailey circus . At that time he was just a guest in Winston-Salem.
The Camel cigarettes were an instant hit. In 1968 they were also introduced in Germany. While the advertising here initially showed martial adventurers (longstanding advertising slogan: "I go miles for a camel filter "), from 1991 onwards, cartoons were used in which the camel had rather surrealistic experiences. A few years later, from 1996, the humpy animal was combined in the commercials with warnings such as “Do not throw burning camels out of the window” or “Do not sit on your camels” and exposed to corresponding adventures.
A parallel figure to the camel camel was Joe Camel , who was specifically intended to address the cigarette company's younger customers in a campaign from 1987 onwards, but who was finally deposed after protests by consumer advocates.
Mural
Inside Reynolds' headquarters in Winston-Salem there is an art deco wall mosaic that also shows a single-humped dromedary. However, unlike the animal depicted on the cigarette packs, this one faces to the right and also shows a slightly different foot position.
literature
- Karen Duve, Thieß Völker: Lexicon of famous animals. From Alf and Donald Duck to Pooh the Bear and Leda's Swan . Piper, Munich 1999, ISBN 3-492-22684-1 , p. 135 f.
Individual evidence
- ↑ Federal Trade Commission: Joe Camel Advertising Campaign Violates Federal Law, FTC Says ( Memento of the original from October 29, 2013 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.
- ↑ Joe Camel on vintageadbrowser.com
- ↑ Image of the mural on flickr.com ( Memento of the original dated November 6, 2013 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.
