thespy

Fearing that its muscle-boat icon had atrophied in recent years, Cigarette Racing Team LLC has launched a provocative new print advertising campaign designed to pump up the powerboat brand.

The campaign's overriding theme is "A Legend Continues." One ad, entitled "A Legendary Obsession," shows a tattoo artist with the "Cigarette Racing Team" oval logo on his hand inscribing "Cigarette" in script onto a woman's arm. Another, entitled "A Legendary Addiction," shows a Cigarette powerboat emerging amid a puff of smoke from a woman's lips.

The effort is a return to the company's original appeal, positioning the boats as racy big-boy toys for a select group of affluent consumers, said Skip Braver, owner, president and CEO of the Aventura-based company.

Even though the 30-year-old company hasn't been aggressively advertised in years, the name "Cigarette" is still "one of the most well-known brand names in the world," he said. It frequently is associated with other brands of "go-fast" powerboats, he said, much the same as Xerox, Kleenex or Post-it have been attached to other brands of copiers, tissues or adhesive notes.

During recent marketing efforts, the brand was positioned more as a family boat, he said. Ads changed frequently and didn't stick to a common theme, Braver said. Soon after buying the company in May, Braver decided to take the Cigarette brand back to its roots as an open-ocean powerboat available to buyers able to spend several hundred thousand dollars. In fact, the company's 46-foot "Rough Rider" tops $750,000.

"These aren't family boats," he said. "These are expensive boats. They go 120 miles per hour and seat four people. The image that goes with that is the bad-boy image with sophistication."

The ads will hammer home the "Legendary" theme sometimes without even showing a boat in the ads, he said. Braver is confident the "Cigarette" logo will suffice to drive home the brand message, he said.

"We're going to let [other boat manufacturers] say, `This is my boat and it goes fast,'" Braver said. "We're selling the lifestyle."

The ads are running in a variety of boating and marine magazines, including Powerboat and Boating, as well as lifestyle publications targeting affluent consumers, such as Dupont Registry, Millionaire's Life and Forza, the magazine for Ferrari owners. In fact, fast cars and fast boats have much the same allure, said Roch Nakajima, president at Blu-Sea Communications Inc., the company's Pompano Beach ad agency.

"We can be PC [politically correct] as much as we want, but it's a sex symbol as much as a Ferrari," he said. "Their point of view was to move away from being hypocritical and go with the image of what Cigarettes are."

The latest advertising, including brochures and other marketing materials, debuted in time for this past weekend's Fort Lauderdale International Boat Show. Next up for the company will be a catalog touting a line of apparel and accessories, like jackets, steering wheels, throttles, a Cigarette calendar and even pin-ups called the "Cigarette Girls," Braver said. It will target Cigarette enthusiasts and even non-boating consumers who appreciate the brand.

"Cigarette is an upscale company with a bad boy, South Beach image," he said. "That's our image, and we've got to go back to that."

Jeffery D. Zbar is a freelance writer. He can be reached at [email protected].


Copyright © 2002, South Florida Sun-Sentinel









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Team V

Tattoo's don't do much for me... I'd rather see the boats.

Padraig

I have only saw the new cig add with the tatoo and did not like it. I usualy really like the cig girls but could not get past the tatoo!

check freak

I agree with Too Old, concentrate on improving the boat and the sales will come themselves. Quality and other factors that influence a purchase usually travel by word of mouth not by advertising.

jmeng

I agree with concentrating on the boat and not the hype but I liked the ad. Not real big on tatoos but I wish I could meet a girl that loved Cigarettes enough to get the logo tatood on them.