Tobacco: Where There’s Smoke There’s a Filter

Considering the bewildering array of new cigarettes, smokers may well find it easier to fight than switch. As tobacco companies jockey for bigger shares of a market that, despite the health scares, is stronger than ever, the industry has erupted in what it mildly calls “brand proliferation.”

Most of the smoke is coming from filters. With only a small part of the market a decade ago, filters have been unintentionally blessed by the health-hazard debate, now account for 65% of the industry’s $7 billion annual sales. Challenging the leader, R. J. Reynolds Tobacco Co., which has the bestselling plain and menthol filters (Winston and Salem), other manufacturers are aiming for the top with new tips.

Having started the high-filtration surge with Kent in 1952, P. Lorillard now has only two nonfilters (York and Old Gold Straights), recently launched True cigarettes in plain and menthol versions. Danville, another new Lorillard filter, is being test-marketed in the South. Philip Morris now has Marlboro Green menthols, Galaxy and 100-mm. Benson & Hedges filters. Last month Liggett & Myers put menthol Chesterfields on the market.

Coupons for Cash. Most prolific of all is the American Tobacco Co. (Pall Mall, Tareyton, Lucky Strike). Vowing “total war” to capture R. J. Reynolds’ lead, American President Robert B. (“Barney”) Walker, 53, has launched 20 new brands since he took over the company in mid-1963. Pall Mall, the leading non-filter, now comes in filter and menthol versions, as do Luckies. The company’s Waterford boasts a moisture-laden filter, Sweet Caporal has an old name with a new tip, and Colony offers coupons exchangeable for cash or trading stamps. Among other brands being tested are Bull Durham filters, Compass, Brighton, Pinnacle. Tennyson, and something that goes by the clinically clean title of Mayo’s Spearmint Blend. This is named after an old Richmond family, not the medical Mayos of Minnesota, but if anyone mistakes the two, Walker probably would not object.

All this, in turn, has earned Walker a new name: other tobaccomen call him “Brand-a-Month Barney.” Though American, with 25% of the cigarette market, is not likely to overtake R. J.

Reynolds (33%) soon, Reynolds has been moved to strike back with some new filters of its own. It launched Prince Albert pipe-tobacco cigarettes to match American’s Half & Half filters, but dropped the brand as a failure. The main event is a new turn in the 40-year rivalry between Lucky Strikes and Reynolds’ Camels, which are now the second-ranked nonfilters (after Pall Mall). Camel filters were introduced this year to compete with American’s fast-growing Lucky filters, and a menthol version is ready to take on Lucky Strike Greens.