People will buy anything. It’s true. For crying out loud, how many juicers has Jack LaLanne sold? Advertising is the name of the game, folks. If you properly promote ANY product, people will buy it.
    
Let’s just go ahead and skip the foreplay and head straight for the main event, eh? Big tobacco is the poster child for savvy advertising. Whether you enjoy choking down a dart (thanks to you, Greg, my Australian friend for THAT terminology) or despise the industry that has been enabling untimely deaths for as long as anyone can remember, you have to hand it to their ad wizards; those guys are always finding ways to keep people buying a product that they know kills them. Simply amazing. Even more astounding, is that the formula to keep people smoking hasn’t really changed much over time. Cigarettes sell as long as they stay “cool.” It really is that simple. Whether through ads, product placement or event sponsorship, tobacco has managed to stay cool, young, hip, and relevant.

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Smokeless tobacco is a norm on the professional baseball field, but, according to a recent National Survey on Drug Use and Health Report, it is increasingly becoming a staple at junior highs and high schools.  The survey specifically cites adolescent males (ages 12 -17) as being the population thrusting smokeless tobacco rates skyward.

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Twenge and Co. Research found that today’s average college student scored higher than 65% of students in 1987 on the Narcissism Personality Inventory (NPI) test.  Jean Twenge, an associate professor of Psychology at San Diego State University, attributes her findings to the changing of our country’s cultural beliefs. She claims this began to happen when the baby-boomer generation began to instill sayings in their children such as “believe in yourself and anything is possible,” “you must love yourself first before you love another,” and “you need to do what is right for you.” Ms. Twenge’s book “Generation Me: Why Today’s Young Americans Are More Confident, Assertive, Entitled — and More Miserable than Ever Before” describes the exponential growth of narcissism among people born after 1980.

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In the Jan 17th issue of The Economist there is an article entitled "The Readers."  In it, the  2007 National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) reported proportion of 17 year olds who read nothing (unless required to do so by school)more than doubled between 1984 and 2004. Last month (Jan 17th) NEA reported that for the first time since 1982, when the survey began, the number of adults who have read, poem, novel, short story, etc. in the past 12 months has risen ----->  from 47% to over 50%.  Additionally, increases most marked, were amongst African American and Hispanic men between the ages of 18-24; a gain of 24%.

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One minute you’re on top of the world. You’re a multi-platinum selling musical artist with tons of cash, endorsements, adoring fans, and public enamor for your charitable contributions. Your girlfriend is one of the hottest young musical acts in the world. Teenage girls want to be with you and teenage guys want to be you. Then, you go and blow it by beating the living crap out of your girlfriend on the side of a California highway, taking the keys and fleeing on foot, leaving her beaten, bloody, hysterical, covered with bite marks and alone in your $2000 a day rented Lamborghini on the side of the road.

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 As the old saying goes, there’s no such thing as bad publicity…or is there? A recent article appearing in Richmond, Virginia’s Style Weekly takes a look at Syke, the energy drink slash anti-smoking marketing tool being used to promote healthy lifestyles in the Old dominion.

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Do a Google image search for “black metal.”  It’s amazing.  You’ll find longhaired Norwegians and Swedes dipped in corpse paint and exploding with spikes.  You’ll find band logos that look more like a Rorschach test made from Satan’s blood where she nicked her fifth leg shaving in the shower.  This is the most extreme/ridiculous/hilarious form of all metal, and a personal favorite subject of mine to follow.  When you dig a little deeper, however, you find that beyond murders, Satan fawning, and church burnings, some black metal bands also have direct ties to white supremacist groups.  So, when Gaahl, leader of black metal’s most popular band at the moment, Gorgoroth, came out of the closet as a gay man, it turned some inverted crosses right side up.

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 So at this point if you haven’t seen  Camel’s notorious No.9 you’ve clearly not been living on planet Earth.  Yes, we all know that it was a low blow from Big Tobacco, but let's talk design aesthetics, not audacity.  As a fellow Designer I thought Big Tobacco made a few good design choices along with a few horrible choices.  What? C’mon this blog isn’t going to be an entire hate-fest on Camel, just a honest critical-critique of its design.  Ready?

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