The Opinionator on... The New Camel Ad Campaign

Cigarettes are evil, but some of us love 'em anyway. What we hate are wack-ass ad campaigns that try needlessly to cute-ify or sex-ify the image of smoking, or campaigns that try to position cigarette advertising as a noble expression of freedom of speech-- when clearly, after decades of lies by cigarette manufacturers, it's an embarrassingly venal form of freedom of speech. So how lame is the new Camel campaign, that according to Fran Creighton, vice-president of marketing at R.J. Reynolds, as quoted in Advertising Age, is "a spoof of advertising itself, as well as social cliches, scandals, and myths." Dream on, Fran. Debuting this week, the new ads incorporate supposedly tongue-in-cheek viewer discretion notes, a la "Pop-Up Video", warning against "subliminal imagery," "pop mythology," and other dangers. RJR's strained irreverence is irrelevant, as far as we're concerned. It's clear we're gonna keep sucking in product no matter what, so it's kinda stupid of them to spend all that ad money and not really fool or charm anybody.