” Inspired by the Marlboro Adventure Team from the 1980s - an annual promotion in which you could win a trip - the company created an Adventure Team catalog. Without the ability to run a massive advertising campaign, how could they build their brand? That’s when Marlboro had its light-bulb moment: It would skirt the ban through a “ customer appreciation promotion. Philip Morris’ star brand Marlboro was in particular trouble. By 1993, the adult smoking rate had shrunk from 42.4 percent of adults to 25 percent, and Big Tobacco was panicking. The origins of Heatherly’s resentment date back to 1970, when Richard Nixon signed legislation banning all tobacco advertising on radio and television, something that devastated the industry’s profits. I was aware it was fucked up, but I was desperate and somewhat in a state of delusion.” I suppose I felt a high when I initially came across one, but then it was just sadness. “I remember feeling really depressed as I cut out the UPCs and bagged them. “My lowest point was walking around looking for discarded cigarette packs on the ground,” she tells me. Heatherly admits that the project was a grim endeavor. Over time, she was able to get her first haul of supplies - a Zippo, a leather backpack and the big prize, a red Fuji folding bike, which cost 2,200 miles, or 440 packs of cigarettes. Luckily for her, her parents owned a bar so she was able to build quite a collection by salvaging miles from discarded packs. To make it a reality, she gathered as many Marlboro Miles as she could find. Inspired by Soul Asylum’s “Runaway Train,” her fantasy included riding the rails to freedom and embarking upon a life as a train hopper. In the mid-1990s, Heatherly was a teen who dreamed of escaping her dysfunctional family.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |