ARTICLE: Marlboro just change

My day to day is choppy for smoke breaks. It's a terrible habit, I recognize. Relatives, friends and colleagues living advising me to quit smoking. But I don't want to here about the known harmful effects of smoking, much less make a self of Atonement. The beginning of the conversation is only a pretext to comment on the recent change in the presentation of Marlboro.
Even some nonsmokers should have been intrigued, weeks ago, to get in bars, bakeries, supermarkets and other retail outlets with ads that indagavam: "Marlboro can end up?". What would have been up to Philip Morris, the manufacturer of the product? The mystery ended in late August. Brand new packages landed in stores, escorted by ads with a sentence like "Marlboro is over. Just innovate ".
Packs ("soft packs"), flip-top boxes and multipacks of the product will not bring more logo inscribed in black. The element "disappeared", now being printed by means of what appears to be a transparent glossy varnish. Another notable item of product packaging, the coat of arms of Philip Morris, also lost colors and becomes gently etched in relief. Perhaps the biggest change ever undertaken on the classic look of the packaging, created by the American designer Frank Gianninoto in 1955 (before that, Marlboro was sold in packs predominantly white).
I have expressed to the Philip Morris Brazil, by e-mail, want to know the reasons for the reform of packaging. Didn't get return (this is the third or fourth time I try, without success, to talk with the company). I would like to consult not only the goals of Visual transformations, but also the reason of another change: the repositioning of the Ribbon opening the BOPP transparent film that involves the packaging.
New position of the Ribbon
New position of the Ribbon
Minutes after acquiring the first unit of the new Marlboro, searched the rebound of the Ribbon where it always had been in the packaging – almost next to its top. I couldn't find it. "Did they removed the attachment to cut costs?", speculated. By examining the product, I found the Ribbon relocated to an intermediate region of the portfolio, just below the logo. Don't wrap covers most all the "body" of the packaging. I didn't like. Friends smokers also expressed embarrassment about the change.
Many remembered that comprehensive wrap helped protect packs and boxes from moisture. One or another ancient model was considered the package a providential door-money (!). But the main reason for dissatisfaction with new plastic wrap, I noted, is the extinction of a habit. We can't remove the film instinctively, without having to look for it, as we're used to doing. That way, we need to change our relationship with the object.
marlboro-detail-brilhoMexer on standards always cause an initial estrangement. Any commotion is predictable, even more so in the internet age, which facilitates the sharing of opinions. We accept, however, that the bold redesign is understandable, since the tobacco industry suffers severe restrictions on advertising. For these companies, the packaging has become a crucial instrument of promotion. By the way, the dimmable display of writing on the packaging of Marlboro would represent a veiled protest at repression suffered by the sector? It would be an action to placate the spirits of supporters of "plain packaging" of cigarettes, free branded? Or the background reasons would be, even, of marketing?
But despite the significant change, certain emblematic traits of Marlboro were kept. In the case of the classical red figure ("flag"), which have already been assigned various meanings subliminal. The best known of them is that the drawing would be a butt (by the same theory, the elongation of stems of the letters "l" and "b", logo, would have phallic connotation...). Probably, the inventors of these hypotheses would find that the fact that all paragraphs of this text starts with "M" would have some hidden meaning. Does not have.
William Kamio is a journalist and executive editor of EmbalagemMarca