Joe Camel she isn’t. A palm-frond skirted hula girl with an orchid tucked behind her right ear, a lime-slice lei and long black hair is a new marketing image for the makers of Camel cigarettes. The company was forced to
Joe Camel she isn’t.
A palm-frond skirted hula girl with an orchid tucked behind her right ear, a lime-slice lei and long black hair is a new marketing image for the makers of Camel cigarettes.
The company was forced to end its “Joe Camel” marketing campaign due to complaints that the friendly smoking camel was luring young smokers to light up.
The reclining hula girl is also smoking a cigarette, presumably from a “Kauai Kolada” pack, one of the brands being sold by the R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Company this summer.
The Kaua‘i label is part of the Winston-Salem, North Carolina-based company’s summertime tropical blend cigarette advertising campaign.
The brands “Kauai Kolada” and “Twista Lime” are being promoted in national magazines, and sold in colorfully-illustrated hard shell metal boxes. A search on the Web shows the brand name on German Web sites in foreign markets as well.
A spokesperson for the tobacco company said in a call to The Garden Island that the place name “Kauai” blended nicely with the word “Kolada,” and that the place name Kaua‘i is an exotic, tropical reference to many consumers.
“Kolada” is apparently a reference to the tropical mixed drink pina colada.
The “Kauai Kolada” tobacco blend is touted as having “Hawaiian hints of pineapple & coconut,” two of the ingredients in a pina colada drink, while the other brand has a “twista lime.”
The two Camel brands are being sold in limited quantities over the summer.
Chris Cook, Editor, can be reached at mailto:ccook@pulitzer.net or 245-3681 (ext. 227).
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