So I am chilling with a friend this evening, and although this crossed my mind a few time during my days as a cigarette smoker. I've always felt stupid to even share it but I decided I would anyway.
So me and my friend are hanging out and there was an empty box of Newport's on a table and the box is upside down. This reminded me of that stupid thought I had so I grab the box and kept rotating it and it may just be me and maybe someone has already thought of this before.
So I proceed to tell my friend a story about how I began to smoke Marlboro. My days growing up in The Bronx and living in an urban city such as New York when I picked up the bad habit of cigarettes Newport was what was introduced to me. Any ad magazine targeted to reach me would have these cool advertisement of really good looking people such as myself ;-) having a great time.
So a little later on I begin to travel and live in different countries and when I left America for the first time I was shocked not to find Newport's. I just thought like most items you can buy anywhere; To me Newport was like Mikey Dee's and it was global. Unfortunately for me at the time it wasn't so when in Rome do as the Romans do. I was actually in London, England and most people smoked Marlboro Lights or Parliament. So that's my story of how I went from Newport's to Marlboro Lights.
As I began to travel more and around my own country I notice unless a city has high census numbers of African Americans and Hispanics Americans Newport's are very hard to find. If you have Black or Hispanic friend who travel a lot and smoke Newport, ask them how crucial it is to purchase a certain of Newport's from the duty free shop before they leave.
OK I am getting to my point now :-)
As I am looking at this cigarette box the first thing the pops in my brain is the logo. If you look at the 2 pictures on the top right I have the box right side up, and up side down. When up side down it looks like the logo for Nike and this box of cigarettes now almost has a sporty look to it. It already contains this sporty like image in a way; but up side down I immediately think of trainers.
Now you may ask yourself "well what does one have to do with the other?" Well I could be wrong and I am not saying that all Blacks and Hispanics wear Nike trainers because I may own just one pair myself. BUT there is no denying that Nike is the number 1 brand of footwear in urban fashion among Blacks and Hispanics between the age of 13-35. You can even go younger then 13 but lets just say 13 because most cigarette smokers would tell you that they started smoking before 18, and I started at 17.
So I explain that to my friend and she says "I never really thought about that but what if your right that's freaking crazy." So we laugh and begin to really think about it and I said being that it's the first time I have ever said that thought out loud maybe I should share it on my blog.
This is not a praise to cigarettes at all and I am not saying that ALL Black and Hispanic American smoke cigarettes, and all the ones that do do not only smoke Newport's. BUT Newport biggest consumer base I believe are in cities where these racial group have settled and call home.
In the picture it almost looks like a box of sneakers, every time I look at it I keep thinking how I need new trainers to work out in and for some reason I am thinking Nike as I look at this photo.
Also I am not saying that this is some kind of planned partnership between Nike and Newport and they are secretly the same company. But the logo when turned around looks the same to me, and maybe it's just a coincidence.
It's also a known fact that President Obama is trying to stop smoking and his brand of choice is Marlboro. But I wonder if he has ever picked up a Newport whilst living in Chicago all those years? LOL!
Thanks for reading.
Yusuf A. Tillery
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