Tobaccoland

Joe Camel, 1990s

Identifying new markets also coincided with the tobacco companies’ efforts to recruit “replacement smokers,” which led to initiatives as early as the 1970s to reach teenagers and young adults as a means of adding customers while older smokers quit or eventually died. The most successful iteration of this was Joe Camel, the advertising spokes-character for Camel cigarettes from 1987 to July 1997 (when the character was banned as a result of the decision in Mangini v. R. J. Reynolds). It worked: in the three years after Joe’s debut, Camel’s share of the under-eighteen market jumped from 0.5 to 33 percent.

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