Tobacco stands in dozens of U.S. cities last week sported cigarette brands that few U.S. smokers had ever seen. To the amazement of many a dealer, packages of the new brands were snapped up by intense young men with briefcases and suspiciously bulging pockets. Who were the young men? They were agents for U.S. cigarette companies, anxiously collecting their competitors' new smokes to rush them back to the laboratory for analysis. Undeterred by the cancer reports—cigarette sales are running 5% ahead of 1958—U.S. cigarette companies have taken off on a scramble to grab a bigger share of the $4¼ billion-a-year cigarette market. Each hopes to turn the trick by outdoing its competitors with new cigarettes that offer the U.S. smoker everything from rum flavor to air-conditioned paper.
The boom in menthol cigarettes is the hottest fad to strike the industry since filters. Almost overnight, menthols have grabbed 10% of the market, are expected to crack 13% by year's end. Makers have discovered to their delight that menthol carries a vague connotation of healthful medication, especially attracts women with its taste.
Vita Manga Est. Last week the menthol drive reached its peak of intensity, proclaimed by full-page ads that touted every gimmick that adman can conceive and machine execute. Philip Morris (Marlboro, Parliament) launched Alpine on a national scale, billed it not only as a long, low-tar, lightly mentholated cigarette with "the longest filter yet," but as one of the few cigarettes since Camel to come in a package with a picture on it (of an Alpine mountain). Brown & Williamson, whose "Thinking Man" Viceroys thoughtlessly slumped 20% in the first quarter, clawed back with two new filters: the mentholated Belair, whose pack also boasts a picture: blue sky with snow-white clouds, and the non-mentholated, "high filtration" Life, whose motto, encrusted on every package in Latin, is: "Life Is Great." P. Lorillard Co. (Kent, Newport, Old Gold) brought out Spring, a tastefully packaged king with "lightest menthol" and "honeycomb filter."
President Bowman Gray of R. J. Reynolds Co., whose Salem is already a mentholated success, was so affected by the sight of all this clamoring at his door that he took a drastic step for the head of a billion-dollar hierarchy. He insisted on answering his own telephone, gave battle orders that he wants to be flashed personally by even the lowliest Reynolds salesman on every development on the cigarette front.