Meet Joe Camel, The Smooth Character Who Encouraged Children To Smoke

With the launch of Camel's 75th-anniversary campaign, developed with the help of the McCann-Erickson advertising company, US audiences were introduced to a completely revamped version of the Camel logo they had previously been familiar with. 

To better compete with tobacco industry leaders like Marlboro, Camel hoped to “freshen up [their] brand’s stale image” with the anthropomorphic camel. Joe was depicted in fashionable threads like leather jackets and tuxedos, and often in the company of a woman.

While past campaigns had invited smokers to “...walk a mile for a Camel,” this new, “jazzier” character promoted a much different image. Joe appeared to be a smooth-talking man’s man (or camel man) who invited viewers to become a “smooth character” like himself.

Critics soon argued that the ads were playing off of “the desire of young people to be hip” and that such an advertisement would increase rates of underaged smoking.

With the introduction of Joe Camel, it became evident that R. J. Reynolds was using the advertising campaign to reflect “a more contemporary image among the crucially important segment of younger male smokers.” But why was this specific population so important? 

According to Roy Burry, who was the senior vice president of Kidder, Peabody & Company (and a close follower of all the happenings in the tobacco industry at this time), "The over-21-year-old smoker is the most prized of all consumers... A young smoker will stick with smoking longer than an older smoker, who [perishes] or quits."

Additionally, by creating advertising campaigns that present smoking as being “pleasurable and [making] a person more popular and attractive,” the company could more easily convince young people that they, too, will enjoy smoking, according to a study by Dr. Joseph R. DiFranza with the University of Massachusetts.

There is a catch, of course. Due to the hazardous nature of cigarettes, tobacco companies are constantly up against the challenge of replenishing a depleting consumer base - hence the importance of instating brand loyalties with consumers while they are still young.

One of the most notable scandals surrounding the Joe Camel cartoon was his appeal to children and underaged consumers. Even though R. J. Reynolds Tobacco Company repeatedly denied any intent for the character to attract the attention of underaged audiences, the statistical data suggested otherwise. 

By 1991 (four years after Joe Camel’s first US appearance), the Journal of the American Medical Association had completed a study that suggested the cartoon character “was widely recognized by and popular among children.” Another study in a New York Times article noted that “even without cigarette advertising on television... six-year-old children were as familiar with Old Joe Camel as they were with the Mickey Mouse logo for the Disney Channel.”

One study published by Dr. Paul M. Fischer with the Medical College of Georgia claimed that the intentions of R. J. Reynolds' Joe Camel ads were "irrelevant" if their advertising "affects what children know." In other words, "Cigarette advertising may be an important health risk for children."

The same study also showed that, upon surveying 229 preschoolers, nearly "30% of 3-year-olds and more than 90 percent of 6-year-olds correctly linked Old Joe Camel to a cigarette."

After its first advertising campaigns were released in 1913, Camel quickly became one of the most popular cigarettes in the US. Yet because the company promoted unfiltered cigarettes, it was unable to compete with the rise of filtered cigarettes - a market shift spearheaded by brands like Marlboro in the 1950s.

From that point on, Camel advertisers found themselves playing catch-up. They developed new campaigns in an attempt to compete with the shifting market, yet no campaign came close to the success of Joe Camel. 

According to Mezzina/Brown Inc., the agency that R. J. Reynolds worked with after October 1989, Joe Camel was meant to be “a whimsical caricature... designed to appeal to the adult smoker and to encourage adult smokers to switch brands.”

Even when critics claimed that Camel’s ads were strategically targeting young people, R. J. Reynolds continued to assert that Joe Camel could be “anything but a standard market tactic meant to persuade adult smokers to switch to Camel from bigger brands like Marlboro.”

Despite the fact that R. J. Reynolds continued to deny allegations that the Joe Camel ads were targeting teens and children, the data soon became undeniable.

As early as 1990, a survey conducted by Dr. John P. Pierce with the University of California, San Diego, revealed that “among 5,040 California youths, 22% of girls and 25% of boys [who] smoked chose Camels.” This finding, cross-referenced against similar studies, suggests this demographic had a significant influence on Camel’s growing market share against its competitors.

As the New York Times explained, “since the start of the Old Joe campaign [in 1988], the brand had become the choice of one-quarter to one-third of smokers under the age of 18. Before the campaign began... less than 1% of those under 18 smoked Camels.”

In fact, another study found that, on average, "young people were found to be far more familiar with the Camel logo than the adults were" across the US.

With the rise of Joe Camel ads in the late 1980s and the ensuing debate around the campaigns’ intention, the entirety tobacco industry came under fire.

Findings from various studies regarding the impact on youth populations garnered the attention of numerous politicians, including Representative Henry A. Waxman, who wrote an accompanying piece to one such study calling for a ban on all tobacco advertising: 

The success of the tobacco industry is dependent on recruiting people who don't believe that smoking kills. Enticing children, third-world populations and disadvantaged members of our own society to smoke is the only way for tobacco companies to make up for the number of smokers who quit or die...

Waxman compared tobacco ads to "the moral equivalent of a national campaign to 'drive drunk - just for the fun of it.'"

Discussions about potential restrictions on advertising efforts began and eventually reached as high as the Clinton presidency before finally being implemented.

After nearly 23 years’ worth of advertising on an international scale, R. J. Reynolds Tobacco Company chose to end the Joe Camel campaigns in 1997. Despite the fact that the lifespan of the campaigns brought with them harsh criticism from politicians and anti-smoking advocates alike, the company asserted that the decision was purely strategic and not due to social and political pressure.

Fran Creighton, who was vice president of marketing for Camel at the time of the announcement, explained that, “like other consumer product marketers, we embrace the theory that variety is the spice of life.” And with this decision, the Camel campaigns reverted back to featuring the classic, well-known desert camel and pyramids logo.