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Why Camel left F1 at the end of 1993 ?


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#1 ToxicEnviroment

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Posted 30 June 2015 - 11:39

I always wondered why did they leave their two top teams after 1993

In hindsight had they stayed they could have "won" 15 out of 16 grand prizes

What were the reasons?

Also a yellow car never ever won a championship. Such a shame.

(I consider Williams predominantly blue car)

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#2 2F-001

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Posted 30 June 2015 - 12:41

Well, hindsight's wonderful isn't it! ;-)

I don't recall quite what was going on in the background in '93 -'94 - after 27 years of great enthusiasm, my close interest in Grand Prix racing was enduring a dip around that time… but these would essentially be marketing decisions driven by corporate imperatives.

Considerations made, mostly inter-related, would include: which brand the sponsor's owners or major influencing body chose to promote at a particular time - and thus the markets they wanted to exploit; possibly the profile of that team (or its engine supplier) in those market areas; the nationality of the team's projected drivers for the coming season and any potential sponsorship clashes those drivers' contracts may entail.
There may also be aspects of the sponsor's on-paper financial or tax position (or maybe future business aspirations such as sale, merger, group restructure) which favoured one brand or company spending money in that way, at that time.

In that particular case, I believe the three consecutively promoted brands on those cars came (at the time) under the influence of the same umbrella company.

Edited by 2F-001, 30 June 2015 - 12:42.


#3 john winfield

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Posted 30 June 2015 - 12:49

I think they just got the hump.



#4 Richard Jenkins

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Posted 30 June 2015 - 13:38

Yes but had they stayed they would also have their sponsorship all over the news for a negative reason with Senna's death so these things balance themselves out

#5 2F-001

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Posted 30 June 2015 - 13:38

More succinct - and possibly nearer the mark, John!

#6 Ross Stonefeld

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Posted 30 June 2015 - 14:22

They stayed at Benetton/Renault as Mild Seven(and also sponsored Ukyo Katayam) until the end of 2006. I was just a name change, really.



#7 Vitesse2

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Posted 30 June 2015 - 15:25

They stayed at Benetton/Renault as Mild Seven(and also sponsored Ukyo Katayam) until the end of 2006. I was just a name change, really.

Eh? Camel is an RJ Reynolds brand - at that time part of RJR Nabisco, but now ultimately owned by BAT. Mild Seven was Japan Tobacco. Admittedly JT now control the Camel brand outside the US, but that deal wasn't done until 1999.

 

At about the time they pulled out of F1, Camel started sponsoring Honda in AMA Superbikes and also two Supercross series. They were also under pressure over the use of the Joe Camel character in their advertising, so perhaps there was a bit of 'just in case' retrenchment?



#8 Ross Stonefeld

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Posted 30 June 2015 - 15:37

Oh was Camel International not JTI at the time?

 

Joe Camel was a problem stateside, so if anything they'd have pulled back on US stuff and just kept spitting money around internationally.



#9 ToxicEnviroment

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Posted 01 July 2015 - 07:17

What was the deal with Joe Camel?

#10 2F-001

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Posted 01 July 2015 - 07:41

'He' was a marketing property featured in their advertising around that time (though I believe the character had been resurrected and revised from campaigns used a couple of decades earlier in other markets).
Some critics said it was blatantly (and successfully) targeting children to 'snare' them to the brand.

I believe some surveys claimed that the one brand had secured a huge proportion of all young and underage smokers - that may have been just in US markets, as Ross says, where other sports deals may have had more influence, I don't know. Whatever, it was controversial there, but controversy can be contagious.

That's all I can recall from my time in advertising, but I'm sure there'll be something about it in the web somewhere.

Edited by 2F-001, 01 July 2015 - 07:56.


#11 Lee Nicolle

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Posted 01 July 2015 - 07:58

Quite probably they had just decided not to renew the contracts and put the money into a different market.

F1 even then devoured money and Reynolds possibly thought they would do better elsewhere, or simply decided that they would spend less money that year than in the past.

Sometimes you wonder about succesfull advertising that stops, or you wonder why they spend money where they do too.



#12 Vitesse2

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Posted 01 July 2015 - 08:15

What was the deal with Joe Camel?

http://www.nytimes.c...ml?pagewanted=1

 

http://tobacco.stanf..._name=Joe Camel



#13 hittheapex

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Posted 01 July 2015 - 09:18

Quite probably they had just decided not to renew the contracts and put the money into a different market.

F1 even then devoured money and Reynolds possibly thought they would do better elsewhere, or simply decided that they would spend less money that year than in the past.

Sometimes you wonder about succesfull advertising that stops, or you wonder why they spend money where they do too.

Added to increasing restrictions on tobacco advertising in F1 on the horizon at that time, too.


Edited by hittheapex, 01 July 2015 - 09:19.


#14 ToxicEnviroment

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Posted 01 July 2015 - 09:44

Added to increasing restrictions on tobacco advertising in F1 on the horizon at that time, too.


On contrary. There was quite an influx of new tobacco sponsors at that time.

Mild Seven
Rothmans
Benson Hedges
Gaulosies

#15 Ross Stonefeld

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Posted 01 July 2015 - 10:47

At the risk of embarrassing myself again, weren't Gauloises/Gitanes the same family, or did that only come later?



#16 hittheapex

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Posted 02 July 2015 - 15:07

On contrary. There was quite an influx of new tobacco sponsors at that time.

Mild Seven
Rothmans
Benson Hedges
Gaulosies

Doh, of course you are right.



#17 Jager

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Posted 02 July 2015 - 17:15

On contrary. There was quite an influx of new tobacco sponsors at that time.

Mild Seven
Rothmans
Benson Hedges
Gaulosies

 

Despite the influx of other tobacco sponsors, Camel may have had more insight to the future bans on tobacco advertising than their competitors. The French had just banned tobacco advertising in F1 in 1992 and the writing was on the wall that other countries would follow. Australia also banned tobacco advertising at the same time, with the Australian GP operating under a specific exemption for several years.



#18 FerrariV12

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Posted 03 July 2015 - 10:33

At the risk of embarrassing myself again, weren't Gauloises/Gitanes the same family, or did that only come later?

 

Yeah that was my memory. The "change" of sponsorship on the Ligiers in 1996 was just the parent company changing the brand to promote, the source of money remained the same.

 

Same as the change from Rothmans to Winfield on the 1998 Williams.

 

Although I seem to remember Gauloises appearing as a minor sponsor on the 1994 Larrousse while Gitanes were still title sponsoring the Ligiers.

 

Regarding Camel it was defintiely a big withdrawal, at the turn of the decade they'd been almost as prolific as Marlboro, in that as well as title sponsoring a team they had smaller logos on many other F1 cars plus sponsoring cars/drivers in the junior categories too, although by 1993 I think they had already scaled back, appearing only on the Williams besides the Benetton, and I don't think they had much presence left in F3/F3000 by that point.



#19 Doug Nye

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Posted 04 July 2015 - 07:23

Neither sure, nor interesting in, why Camel withdrew from sponsorship as above in the 1990s, but I do have vivid memories of the Spa 1,000Kms in 1971 when we arrived before practice to find the place plastered in yellow advertising for Camel cigarettes.

 

Most charmingly uniformed (and extremely good looking) girls were wandering around offering free samples - ahem, of Camel cigarettes - and there were even gas balloons flying tethered above the Eau Rouge valley and pits area bearing large Camel lettering and logos.  This hullabaloo was all to herald the debut of the Camel-sponsored Huron team who had entered two cars, one for Roger Enever and I believe Clive Baker to drive.  I think that their's was the only bright-yellow, Camel-lettered car to make it onto the track at Spa. It then ran appallingly badly during practice - Roger despaired of being able to fix it, or even complete it properly, in time - and there was no way it could start the race, so it was withdrawn.  I don't think the red-faced Camel people were terribly impressed by this first experience - as far I can recall - upon the European scene at such a level, and their blanket sponsorship presence fell completely on its face.  

 

As someone who has always detested cigarette smoking - and the manufacturers and their ethics even more intensely - I remember laughing like a drain at this very public disaster for R.J. Reynolds...but that was certainly a very tough and humiliating experience for the Huron boys who must have thought all their dreams had come true at once when Camel had initially signed-up with them. 

 

DCN



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#20 AAGR

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Posted 04 July 2015 - 07:39

Dear Doug, if you thought Camel marketing was hard-nosed, you should have experienced the way that Rothmans backed Ford (and later Porsche) rally teams in the late 1970s/early 1980s. It did more harm to the Sutton Escorts' image than they could possibly have forecast at the time ....

 

It was so bad that I, along with other journos of the day, tried our hardest never to mention the name at all - and I recall being summoned to a rather frigid afternoon tea conference in a London hotel to explain myself to Rothmans. They were not at all impressed ....

 

AAGR



#21 Jager

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Posted 04 July 2015 - 08:24

What's interesting is that Camel also ended their sponsorship of the IMSA series in 1993. However, in 1994 they began sponsoring a NASCAR team, so perhaps it was part of a global change in the realignment of their motorsport $$$.

 

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#22 Michael Ferner

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Posted 04 July 2015 - 08:41

Most charmingly uniformed (and extremely good looking) girls were wandering around offering free samples


Photos? :cool:

I mean, you can't just say that and offer no proof whatsoever for the veracity of your argument - after all, this is TNF!

#23 ensign14

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Posted 04 July 2015 - 10:13

Despite the influx of other tobacco sponsors, Camel may have had more insight to the future bans on tobacco advertising than their competitors. The French had just banned tobacco advertising in F1 in 1992 and the writing was on the wall that other countries would follow. Australia also banned tobacco advertising at the same time, with the Australian GP operating under a specific exemption for several years.

That's surely a good reason for swamping as much as they could with advertising colours.  Especially now with cigarette packets being anonymized so you have to ask really by name.  People still know Marlboro from motor racing; do people recall such venerable brand names as Regal or Embassy so much?
 



#24 Ross Stonefeld

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Posted 04 July 2015 - 11:05

Is that because of racing or because Marlboro just went big on advertising in general? The Marlboro Man, and that at least in America they were the primary advertiser in magazines, shop displays, etc.

What I always found interesting was I rarely found people smoking what I thought were the 'mainstream' brands based on their sponsorships. People would smoke something random I wasn't very familiar with like Kent, was that due to cost or taste? The exception was Marlboro Lights. But rarely saw someone smoking Marlboro reds. Or Kool.

Saw Benson & Hedges from time to time and Camel popped up regularly in America, but it seemed far more likely that someone was smoking Pall Malls(in the UK).

I dunno, maybe France was wall to wall Gauloises and Germany West but anyone I knew who smoked would pull out a packet of something I literally had never heard of.

#25 Doug Nye

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Posted 07 July 2015 - 16:49

I take Graham's point about Rothmans, of course. As for being taken to task for having failed to mention the sponsor's brand name, I vividly recall being bawled-out by a senior Ford exec for consistently describing the Lotus 49 as a Lotus-Cosworth 49 - not 'Lotus-Ford' - and after we went on the press launch of the Triumph Dolomite I received a call from the BL PR bloke responsible who demanded to know why I hadn't had anything published about the experience.  When I assured him that by not writing anything about the new car I was actually doing him and his company a favour (because I thought it was a lemon, going nowhere in face of BMW) he wasn't a happy chap. In contrast I was supremely happy to have minimal contact with production industry PR people ever after. I guess I had got myself black-listed for being 'uncooperative'.

 

Around that time there was some fuss about Guild of Motoring Writers members repaying the industry's splendid free trips with splendidly glowing road test reports - common corrupt practice in other words.  I was a Guild member but if any PRO thought I was going to write something nice about his company's product just because they'd put me up in a pleasant hotel for a night or two, provided fine hospitality and free flights, etc...well, he had another think coming.  Tsk tsk - I probably shot myself in the foot there, but road cars have always held about as much interest for me as a fridge or a Hoover.  Give me cars in which interesting people do interestingly competitive things (now behave out there) and it's a different story.  And one that, in contrast, I have always considered worthwhile.

 

DCN