The Snacking Otaku does not endorse the consumption of any mind-altering substances …. including tobacco.
The Snacking Otaku only explores subjects involving such substances just for the sake of curiosity about its chemistry, health effects and its impact on culture and society.
Imagine a man doing
something (say, he’s walking down a street in nice clothes going on a date)
then some misfortune happens to him (say, a bus drives pass him over a large
muddy puddle and splashes him). In internet forums since 2012 this situation
would likely be depicted as a Bad Luck Brian meme. But in a British TV
commercial break from 1964 to 1991 it was very likely that this scene will come
with a jazz remix of a piece of Bach playing while he gets out a cigar and
smokes it, followed with a voiceover saying “Happiness is a cigar called Hamlet.
The mild cigar.” The Hamlet cigar campaign is one of the longest running in
advertising history and one of the most iconic pieces of comedy remembered by
British TV viewers in the 20th century, outside sitcoms and sketch shows. This
nibble explores the product (reluctantly) and the campaign’s creation and
execution.
Gallaher’s
Princes of Denmark
Hamlet cigars were launched in the UK in 1964. It was one of a
number of new brands of cigar that came out in the 1960s. They were made by tobacco
firm Gallaher, who commissioned CDP to advertise them, after successfully
turning one of their little-known cigarette brands into one of the best-selling
– Benson & Hedges. Wanting a name that was sort of European, Gallaher
originally thought of calling the brand “Prince of Denmark.” But it was
considered too much of a mouthful, so they went with the name of Shakespeare’s
iconic Danish prince - Hamlet.
Hamlets stood out in the market. They were packaged in a
light-coloured hull and slide pack (like matches), while others were sold in
dark-coloured tins.
Hamlet cigars were longer, slimmer and were wrapped in Connecticut
shade-green leaf, making them look and taste lighter than competitors.
CDP’s Finest Work
The Hamlet campaign is the product of legendary British
advertising agency Collett Dickenson Pearce. Co-founder John Pearce claimed his
agency specialized in “booze, fags, and fashion,” due to their early work in
these fields, which included Gallaher. They were responsible for many iconic
ads, including ones for Hovis bread, Heineken beer, Bird’s Eye frozen food, Parker
Pens, and Fiat cars. Their ads were mostly visual in nature, made use of a lot
of British cultural tropes and very cultured education of its creators, and
used humour. This earned them a lot of awards and a lot of clout, as one of the
most successful ad agencies outside America.
One reason for CDP’s focus on visuals (and resulting success) is due to the UK not having legal commercial radio stations until the 1970s (pirate stations were broadcasting in the 1960s). American radio was commercialized from the start. So, US ad men had decades of experience writing wordy ads for radio … and it shows in early US TV ads. UK ad men never had that experience, so never developed that debilitating habit. The Hamlet ads, with their visual humour and lack of dialogue, are testament of that.
Why smoke? And why Hamlets?
When given the job advertising this new brand, John Collett did
the then unusual thing of talking to consumers about why they smoked small
cigars to get some ideas. He found out that smokers felt inner relaxation when
smoking and cigars are seen as an affordable luxury that elevates life for a
small moment during a hectic day. Apart from the addictiveness of nicotine,
this is an accurate description why people smoke tobacco. From that research, the idea that Hamlet
cigars can bring “solace in the face of adversity” came to be, like a snack
after a horrible day at work.
Creating the Slogan
The story goes that CDP copywriters Tim Warriner and Roy
Carruthers were running late home one stormy night after failing to crack a
brief they were given weeks earlier. They caught a double decker bus and went
straight to the top deck desperate for a smoke (at the time, you were allowed
to smoke of the top deck, but not the bottom deck of London buses). Finding a
stale cigarette in his pack, Tim inhaled, leaned back and sighed to himself
“Happiness is a dry cigarette on the top of a 34 bus.” Rob wrote it down and a
slogan was born.
The Tune
The Hamlet campaign claims to be the
first to use music as an identifier of a brand’s personality. Chosen by
creative director Colin Millward, ‘Air on the G String’ is an
arrangement from the second movement of Bach’s Orchestral Suite No. 3 in D Major,
made by violinist August Wilhelmj in 1871. In 1960 the Jacques Loussier Trio
released Play Bach No. 2, featuring their rendition of Suite No. 3 in D
Major with ‘Air on the G String.’ It’s this version that is used in most Hamlet
ads. Play Bach had been used before, in TV ads for Benson & Hedges
cigarettes. It was a clever way to indicate Hamlet’s parentage without saying
it outright. It was released as a single in 1966.
Standing Out
Back in the 1960s, most tobacco ads used idealized stereotypes of
their target customer demographics, which they could aspire to. The Hamlet ads
did the opposite, by depicting a victim in an embarrassing or frustrating situation,
who then found temporary refuse by smoking the product. The ads never claimed
that Hamlets can solve your problems. The message was that they were there when
life gets your down.
First ads
The first Hamlet ad aired in 1964, with John Clive in a hospital
bed with a plastered leg. In the early ads, the music played and the cigar was
seen from the start of the ad. This changed in 1966, with a music teacher
(played by Patrick Cargill) been frustrated with a bad student playing the
piano. After lighting a cigar, the kid’s bad playing is replaced with the tune.
This established the format used in later ads - and that’s why many sources say
the first Hamlet ad aired in 1966.
How many and how successful?
They have been over 100 Hamlet TV ads, as well as about 35
radio ads and about 50 print ads. The campaign can be seen as a success by the
fact that Hamlet became the UK’s best-selling cigar brand. By the 21st century,
nearly half of all cigars smoked in the UK were made by Gallaher and more than
four out of ten of them were Hamlets.
“The last hairs of Gregor Fisher” - Willie Rushton
Of all the Hamlet ads, the one that is mentioned on every
“greatest ads ever” list in the one that first aired in 1986 that was set in a
photobooth. It began as a sketch on the TV show Naked Video. Gregor
Fisher plays a vain bald man with a large combover who tries to get a nice
portrait taken in a photobooth. The camera flashes at undesired times,
including just after the seat gives way, making him fall. In the ad, he gets a
cigar out after that fall.
Parodies
Naturally, the ads became subject to parody. A noted example is
from a 1982 episode of sketch show Not The 9’Clock News, where Griff
Rhys Jones smokes a cigar after been told his diagnosis of lung cancer.
“Shame our
ads have to stop” – 2003 print ad
Tobacco ads in general were banned on UK TV in 1991. (TV ads for
cigarettes were banned back in 1965, but cigars and piped tobacco were still
allowed). In 1992 a commemorative video was released, starring Willie Rushton
as the curator and a visitor touring a fictional museum dedicated to the ads.
New ads appeared on cinema screens from 1996 until they were banned in 1999. The
last ever ads were posted online in 2003, just as a ban in all forms of tobacco
advertising came into effect.
Comments
Post a Comment