Brand Loyalty
Freshman year of college, he gave soccer a shot, faring well that first day — but when asked who among them had captained their high school teams, thirty-eight hands went up (out of forty), his included. A 5-mile run was scheduled for later that afternoon: thus, the final hurrah for team sports.
Instead, he dated a girl who couldn’t tolerate jocks. She, too, smoked: Marlboro Reds. He favored Mediums at the time — until she publicly declaimed his manhood. She brayed like a donkey and had a gap between her two front teeth, but these imperfections made her all the more alluring. He was smitten. By midterms, he was up to a pack a day.
Before Mediums, he smoked Merit Lights, which packed the punch of a rolled-up napkin — and thus, he believed, wouldn’t hinder his athleticism. Years later (after his second attempt to quit), he briefly rebranded again: this time, to Newports. The leap to mentholated was met with universal shock (by 2004, he would have smoked approximately 65,750 Marlboros) — but north of 145 Street, the only neighborhood he could then afford, Newports were plainly cost-efficient. A brutal lesson in socio-economics.
Your brand is your signature. When purchasing that inaugural pack — be it Marlboros, or Camels, or even a bag of Drum — it’s because you relate to some element in the marketing. The Marlboro Man, perhaps, or Joe Camel; the erudite blue and white of Parliaments, or the dusty brown hues of a pack of Merits. In high school, the cool kids smoked Marlboro Lights: the Number 2 pencil of social climbers.
Benson & Hedges, Chesterfields, and Carltons; Dunhills, Gauloise, and Gitanes; Kents, Kools, and Salems; Lucky Strikes, Pall Malls, and Players; GPC; Capri: under the proper conditions, he’d smoked ’em all. If there’s no such thing as an atheist in a foxhole, neither does brand loyalty survive a particularly long car ride.
Cultural gulf notwithstanding, even Marlboros and Newports shared a commonality: these were brands that, when strangers asked to bum a smoke, they blanched at his offer — like he’d proposed a swift kick in the nuts. Cigarettes for hardcore, flint-and-tinder, Nobody likes a quitter! smokers — not some Extra Light, recessed-filter pussies. Cigarettes for men. In college, he was known as the guy who smoked Reds; and then, later in life, as the guy who smoked Newports — before returning to Marlboros, when (ironically) better living allowed. That counted for something, he thought: to be renowned.
Or so he believed. Because — no matter how old or how young — all smokers are children.
