How did Marlboro evade an EU ban on visible cigarette advertising for its Formula 1 team? Read on:
The livery (paint job) features a predominately red car with a number of associate sponsor logos; Shell Gasoline, Ferrari itself, Bridgestone and a few others. The most striking aspect of this design and the subject of this article is a red, black and white barcode-like design on the canopy of the vehicle, as well as on the uniforms of drivers Fernando Alonso and Felipa Massa. Up close it just looks like a cool aesthetic touch but from a distance (and possibly even more clearly when moving 200 mph) it appears to resemble the packaging of a certain cigarette manufacturer. Can you guess which one?
Are you next going to have a story about P&G’s moon-and-stars logo was a satanic symbol? Sometimes a design is just a design and nothing more.Report
@Scott, Then why is Marlboro getting rid of the design? I’m hating on them – I think the original restriction is ridiculous. In fact, I applaud Marlboro for finding such a clever way around it.Report
@Will, I’m not hating on them*Report
@Will,
Perhaps Ferrari is getting rid of it b/c doing so is easier than fighting silly allegations that you can never disprove, just like P&G did.Report
Advertising at its best. Makes me long for the return of Mad Men.Report
The cigarette companies are lying megacorps who peddle poison to idiots. And they should be free to advertise however they like damn them.Report
I don’t think smokers are idiots. Smoking, along with alcohol and coffee, is one of the most perfect and universal consolations available to man.Report
@Matthew Schmitz, Perhaps idiots is excessively harsh. Demi-idiots is perhaps better? Neither alcohol nor coffee pickle the inside of your lungs from ordinary moderate use nor do they make you and all your possessions reek like a garbage incinerator for as long as you continue to use them. While I’m aware that alcohol has some heightened health risk factors they’re not as severe as cigarettes.Report
@North, that’s true, as far as the effect that basic use has on the user. However, any conversation weighing the negative effects of tobacco vs alcohol has to take addiction into account. Tobacco addiction ruins your lungs. Alcohol addiction ruins your life.Report
@trumwill, Trum, I am willing to concede that point. But to provide a counter point; a person who drinks moderately will typically suffer no significant long term ill effects and is at not a particularly high chance of physiological addiction. A person who smokes moderately will be assured highly negative long term effects and will be physiologically addicted to the cigarettes in short order. Certainly I’ll agree that alcohol is also a poison but it is a somewhat less pernicious and slightly less lethal one.
Truth be told I’m biased. My Grandfather was a fisherman and he smoked my Grandmother to death (second hand smoke induced lung cancer) and then was a walking exhibit of hell on earth for a couple of years until he died. I’ve never seen a man die of guilt before. May I never see it again.Report