Camel Snus

it's a known fact i spent months paying bills via focus groups more than once. some were more honest than others, but 90% of sin is caused by having to pay rent. (now that i've typed this, you can say you "read that somewhere" and sound credible. you're welcome.)

i spent time in an mri, having my brain scanned for the portion that controlled addiction and was paid $240 and a large, printable, poster of my brain going through withdrawl. i think being trapped in the mri was worse than the quitting of cigarettes before the study.

but most studies weren't as intense as that.

i spoke of starbucks coffee-in-a-can, video games and the personalities of alcoholic beverages and i did it all to pay rent at a place infested with nine kinds if spiders.

one of the studies i was a part of belonged to camel. those of us who either smoked more than a pack a day or pretended to were invited into a room on the 14th floor of a random soma building to play with magazine cutouts and crayola markers for two hours. no breaks. and no breaks meant no smokes for addicts.

but, the entire time, there was a complimentary tin of camel snus awaiting our lips and gums. the host had explained that we could not leave, but that the snus was all ours.

and we never tried it. we sat through the fiending rather than trying that tiny teabag of tobacco.

afterward, we were told the study was camel's doing-- that it was an attempt to see if smokers were particularly drawn to the idea of nicotine or smoke. they wanted to determine whether or not useless two-hour meetings might result in our in-taking snus or if we'd just like a cigarette.

we all, unanimously, chose smokes.

but they made snus anyway.

i'm not sure why considering the focus group made it very clear the idea would not sell. and since that day, i've seen free tins given away, coupons for discounted tins and now the advertisement above.

similar to camel snus, i don't generally pick up paper-websites from the street vendors, but i have friends who swear by them. inevitably, some of these papers find the end of their lives on my ikea coffee table. and while i don't read them very much (because i can't give up on the article when it gets boring and switch to something more interesting), these sfweeklys and examiners wind up abandoned in my house and sit around calmly awaiting the return of their owner. usually, no one ever comes to pick them up because they've already found a newer one and because i've already cut it to pieces for a collage.

oh, the life of a newspaper.

by the way, did you know web-surfing is a great mind exercise? especially for middle aged people.

but this advertisement caught my eye: "avoid the mainstream"

that is a dangerous thing to be said by a company marketing addiction. and, actually, it is "AVOID THE MaINSTREAM" as if to say, "we didn't capitalize that second-to-last 'a' because that would be too mainstream, and you know."

and there it sits, covering half of the sfweekly page, squeezed beside a depressed article of doctor syed and all of his evil.

conveniently completed with a small white circle that reads, "this product may cause mouth cancer."

i feel like that cancerous warning-filled circle sort of depletes the possibility of the catchphrase's success. i don't care what you say i should do if what you believe in might cause mouth cancer-- and while i may be weird, i know i'm normal on this one.

what's wrong with you, camel? why did you institute that focus group if you planned to ignore the results and create this snus nonsense anyway? i wonder what the marketing team is paid and if they're hiring-- because, damn.

p.s. i should mention i started smoking again. i know. we'll talk about it later.