(Filed under: sharks jumped.)
Brynn got this in the mail last week and shared it with me. Let’s just say that it struck a nerve.
I’ve worried for some time that “open” as a market differentiator is becoming diluted and washed out, just as “organic” and “green” before. Like “2.0”, companies are coming to see “open” as just the next checkbox-marketing-trend to hitch their fading brands to.
Consider my fears confirmed.
Camel doesn’t really believe in openness — let alone grok the concept — let alone give a shit about openness — but since all the cool kids are doing it, they’re happy to co-opt the label to win points. Let the backfire begin.
At the height of cynicism, we have a company whose primary business is architecting new schemes to kill people with their death products, aligning their brand with “openness”. Consider the line crossed.
Watch Mad Men for five minutes and see if you don’t think that these assholes should be strung up by the balls (since it’s predominantly white men who run these companies) and left for the vultures. Or left to be lynched by the families of the addicted and deceased.
Fuck it, I’m going to go ahead and break Godwin’s Law. In the spirit of openness.
It is estimated that the Nazis killed 20,946,000 people from 1933 to 1945 (R.J. Rummel, Democide: Nazi Genocide and Mass Murder, 1993.)
Guess how many people are killed by tobacco-related illnesses every year?
Roughly 20% of that number. Smoking and tobacco-related diseases cause on the order of 4.2 million premature deaths per year (according to the WHO Tobacco Atlas in 2000). That means that tobacco kills in five years what it took the Nazis twelve.
And, according to the World Bank, smoking also contributes a disproportionate number of deaths in the United States over all:
| Mortality Ages 35-69/Cause | Percent From Smoking |
|---|---|
| All Cancer, 1985 | 39% |
| All Cancer, 1995 | 42% |
| Lung Cancer, 1985 | 91% |
| Lung Cancer, 1995 | 91% |
| COPD, 1985 | 78% |
| COPD, 1995 | 80% |
| Vascular Disease, 1985 | 31% |
| Vascular Disease, 1995 | 33% |
| Mouth and Throat Cancers, 1985 | 67% |
| Mouth and Throat Cancers, 1995 | 68% |
And the future? The World Health Organization projects that from 2025 to 2030, 10 million people worldwide will die from tobacco-related causes (the majority in developing countries):
So, you want to be part of the “open” revolution, Camel? Welcome!
I presume this means that you’re ready to start coming clean and owning up to the millions of deaths your industry has caused? Or is “CamelOpenCircle” just another marketing gimmick to trick people into thinking that you’re on the up and up of what’s trendy?
Newsflash muthafuckas: openness is hot not because it’s a gimmick, but because it means something to those of us who are tired of being lied to, being mislead, being cajoled and tricked by companies like you. FUCK YOU. Brands like yours could learn a thing or two from openness; too bad everything about you is the direct inverse of everything that we stand for.
Bottom line:
…and aligning yourselves with openness will never change that.
Factory Joe 