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Mike Salisbury created Joe Camel in 1987. Four years later the
American Medical Association reported that six year olds could
identify Camel’s character better than Mickey Mouse, Fred Flintstone,
Bugs Bunny, or Barbie. And in 1996, Print magazine hired me to
interview Mike about the cigarette campaign he created, which was
still going strong.
I have strong feelings about cigarettes. My mother had died
from lung cancer when I was 17 years old. But in my role as
objective reporter, I decided at the outset to stay impersonal.
The only exception was my end tag bio; playing off a well-
known Bill Clinton quote at the time, I wrote that I “never
inhaled tobacco.“
I met Mike for the first time when we sat down for dinner at
Gordon Biersch, a brewery/restaurant in Pasadena. I can’t resist
a pun, no matter how bad, so when Mike ordered the ribeye
I immediately told the waiter I’d have the same, just in case I
wanted to title the piece “My Steak with Salisbury.“ Instead,
my editor wisely settled on “Defending Joe Camel, Sort of.”
Our meal lasted a leisurely four hours, which apparently
isn’t the norm. While conducting an even lengthier interview
with Rudy VanderLans at his studio for Print in 1992, he
remarked that when Patrick Coyne was writing his Emigre
feature for Communication Arts, he was in and out within a
half hour.
The following is the full transcript from the July/August
1996 issue of Print. I’ve also added my commentary.
Since career summaries tend to resemble laundry lists, which
can often be tedious, I made Mike’s as brief as possible. And to
connect with younger designers, I began my intro by linking
Mike to a more easily recognizable name. The David Carson
connection first occurred to me because I knew that he’d,
umm, “adapted” Mike’s 1985 To Live and Die in L.A. movie
poster two years later, for a Transworld Skateboarding cover.
He’s an avid surfer who began his career designing a surf magazine
and gained notoriety with his radically experimental covers and
spreads for lifestyle and rock-’n’-roll publications. No, it’s not who
you think; it’s Mike Salisbury, who was creating a sensation with
West back when David Carson was only a teenager. Salisbury went on
to art direct City and Rolling Stone and design hundreds of movie
campaigns, including Raiders of the Lost Ark, Jurassic Park,
and Aliens. His client list includes Levi-Staruss, Michael Jackson,
and Disneyland. Salisbury’s latest design effort, a cyber-sleaze
porno mag called Rage, [Hustler’s Larry Flynt, editor] should also
provoke some rage, at least among feminists and fans of refined design.
I recently got together with the original Southern California bad-boy
CASE STUDY:
my annoTaTed inTerview wiTh mike salisbury
michael Dooly
Michael Dooley is a designer, educator, and Print contibuting editor.
In this interview, Dooley takes the reader through the interview process
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Joe Camel, the venerable Camel cigarette mascot,
received a make-over to appeal to a younger
audience. The campaign was a success and the
outcry against it was also.
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Mike Salisbury created Joe Camel in 1987. Four years later the
American Medical Association reported that six year olds could
identify Camel’s character better than Mickey Mouse, Fred Flintstone,
Bugs Bunny, or Barbie. And in 1996, Print magazine hired me to
interview Mike about the cigarette campaign he created, which was
still going strong.
I have strong feelings about cigarettes. My mother had died
from lung cancer when I was 17 years old. But in my role as
objective reporter, I decided at the outset to stay impersonal.
The only exception was my end tag bio; playing off a well-
known Bill Clinton quote at the time, I wrote that I “never
inhaled tobacco.“
I met Mike for the first time when we sat down for dinner at
Gordon Biersch, a brewery/restaurant in Pasadena. I can’t resist
a pun, no matter how bad, so when Mike ordered the ribeye
I immediately told the waiter I’d have the same, just in case I
wanted to title the piece “My Steak with Salisbury.“ Instead,
my editor wisely settled on “Defending Joe Camel, Sort of.”
Our meal lasted a leisurely four hours, which apparently
isn’t the norm. While conducting an even lengthier interview
with Rudy VanderLans at his studio for Print in 1992, he
remarked that when Patrick Coyne was writing his Emigre
feature for Communication Arts, he was in and out within a
half hour.
The following is the full transcript from the July/August
1996 issue of Print. I’ve also added my commentary.
Since career summaries tend to resemble laundry lists, which
can often be tedious, I made Mike’s as brief as possible. And to
connect with younger designers, I began my intro by linking
Mike to a more easily recognizable name. The David Carson
connection first occurred to me because I knew that he’d,
umm, “adapted” Mike’s 1985 To Live and Die in L.A. movie
poster two years later, for a Transworld Skateboarding cover.
He’s an avid surfer who began his career designing a surf magazine
and gained notoriety with his radically experimental covers and
spreads for lifestyle and rock-’n’-roll publications. No, it’s not who
you think; it’s Mike Salisbury, who was creating a sensation with
West back when David Carson was only a teenager. Salisbury went on
to art direct City and Rolling Stone and design hundreds of movie
campaigns, including Raiders of the Lost Ark, Jurassic Park,
and Aliens. His client list includes Levi-Staruss, Michael Jackson,
and Disneyland. Salisbury’s latest design effort, a cyber-sleaze
porno mag called Rage, [Hustler’s Larry Flynt, editor] should also
provoke some rage, at least among feminists and fans of refined design.
I recently got together with the original Southern California bad-boy
CASE STUDY:
my annoTaTed inTerview wiTh mike salisbury
michael Dooly
Michael Dooley is a designer, educator, and Print contibuting editor.
In this interview, Dooley takes the reader through the interview process
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Joe Camel, the venerable Camel cigarette mascot,
received a make-over to appeal to a younger
audience. The campaign was a success and the
outcry against it was also.
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art director for an unfiltered discussion about his controversial creation,
Joe Camel.
I found Mike to be a delightfully entertaining raconteur.
His design career dates back to the early 1960s, and his
life is jam-packed with amazing adventures and significant
accomplishments. I could have easily built a full feature profile
from our conversation, but I’d only been allocated one page
spread. And so, when trimming my text I kept a tight focus
on a single topic. I’m also most grateful to my Print editors,
Carol Stevens and Julie Lasky.
Keeping the magazine’s readership in mind, I put a design-
related comment up front
DOOLEY: When you and Scott Mednick debated the morality of
cigarette advertising at the ’93 AIGA conference he claimed that,
since you said you were willing to promote anything legal, by
extension that could include Hitler.
SALISBURY: That’s a cheap shot, an easy shot, but it’s not a
fair analogy. Cigarettes and the Nazi party don’t have anything
in common. You should compare what I do with what the
movie industry does with product placement instead. Ask
Oliver Stone why everybody in Natural Born Killers was
smoking, and does he think it influences people, and is it
an unfair, subliminal influence.
Next I moved on to specifics.
DOOLEY: Did Camel choose you for your reputation for reaching the
youth market?
Salisbury: They came to me because of all the movie work
and nostalgic, retro advertising I’ve done. The original concept
was to reprise old motion picture posters and have heroes like
Humphrey Bogart and Gary Cooper smoking Camels, but it
bombed because the target audience doesn’t know or care about
old movies. Then we put a camel’s head on Sam Spade and they
still didn’t understand it. But when we gave him the Miami
Vice look, it got great test response, and that became
the campaign.
Camel later ran a campaign with a “Pleasure to Burn“
tagline, in the mid-2000s. It used a pulp detective-style
character wearing a period trench coat and fedora. It also
closely resembled Mike’s early, retro drawings. When I
showed it to him recently he just shrugged and told me
that’s how the ad game is played.
Next, I took advantage of Mike’s Miami Vice comment as an
opportunity to hit the subliminal snout issue.
DOOLEY: That raises a side issue: some people claim Joe Camel is a
phallic symbol. Were you really thinking of Don Johnson’s johnson?
[See: I can’t stop myself.]
SALISBURY: I never thought of that until some lady called
me and said, “Isn’t that like a dick?“ I was just trying to make
this stupid head have some kind of expression I could change
from ad to ad, and I remembered how Sean Connery as James
Bond could move his eyebrows so expressively. So I ripped off
his eyes and eyebrows and Don Johnson’s hair.
I assume readers hate being bogged down with numbers as
much as I do. So rather than cite specifics statistics I tossed out
a generality that worked just as well.
DOOLEY: Besides women, kids are the only way for the tobacco in-
dustry to expand its market, and Camel’s share among teenagers has
been rising astronomically.
SALISBURY: Camel wasn’t going after new smokers; they
were trying to get smokers to switch. They felt their target
market was a guy about 25, who had a truck and a T-shirt job.
Mike’s response was a dodge. But rather than press the matter di-
rectly, I decided to approach it from another angle. The fact that it
worked surprised me. I was also grateful for Mike’s magnanimity.
DOOLEY: But couldn’t a campaign directed at pickup drivers appeal
just as well to adolescants who want to feel more confident, improve
their image, be more popular?
SALISBURY: Now that’s a better, more reasonable argument
than comparing cigarettes to Hitler. What you’re saying is
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probably right. If this kid identifies with what’s targeted to
another, older guy, I agree it will have an influence.
You’re right, I sold a lot of cigarettes: sales went from $30
million a year to $330 million. I’d like to take all the credit,
but advertising doesn’t encourage smoking, it encourages
brand loyalty.
I’ll tell you the real reason kids smoke. They know it’s bad
for them but they see the guys in Guns ’n’ Roses [yes, it was
1996], and Madonna and all their heroes in movies and music
videos smoking. I remember seeing James Dean smoke in
movies and thinking that was cool, and I don’t think I was
aware of cigarette advertising.
It’s also a way they can rebel and piss off their parents.
Their parents aren’t going to smoke, they’re all vegetarians
and New-Agers.
And kids will choose Camel because it’s not their father’s
brand: it’s not Marlboro. And maybe they’re also more aware
of Camel because of what I did.
Our conversation had been easygoing throughout, but at this
point I felt even more comfortable. I continued to press the issue.
DOOLEY: But Joe Camel is as much an icon as Madonna: Each can
contribute subliminally to the behavior of an insecure adolescent.
SaliSbury: You’re right, I’m probably responsible, guilty
as charged. If advertising, product placement, manufacture,
sales, and government subsidies encourage people to smoke,
then I’m part of that whole machinery.
Again, I was surprised. This time it was because it seemed
that, in the campaign’s nine years, Mike was confronting,
and even conceding, on this issue for the first time. My
next question was meant to raise the human equation.
Dooley: Do you feel any responsibility about what you advertise?
SaliSbury: I figure the people who smoke have made their
own decision. I feel a responsibility to myself. I think about
whether I should be a part of something I wouldn’t encour-
age my own kids to do. I actually turned the job down at first.
But they kept coming back and I got caught up in doing it as
a problem-solving exercise, and that probably took over the
morality issue at some point, like the accelerator of a jet plane.
In all honesty, I really didn’t think I’d be good at selling
cigarettes. I didn’t think we could knock Marlboro out.
I regularly use Mike’s answer to introduce an ethics discussion
with my design history students. It also works as a lead-in to
Tibor Kalman’s “First Things First“ manifesto of 1999.
There’s an old adage that says to save your toughest ques-
tion, the one you’re not sure what the reaction will be, until
the end. That way, if your interviewee is insulted enough to
cut the conversation short, you’ll still have accumulated plenty
There’s an old adage that says to save your toughest question,
the one you’re not sure what the reaction will be,
until the end. That way, if your interviewee is insulted
enough to cut the conversation short, you’ll still have
accumulated plenty of material.
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art director for an unfiltered discussion about his controversial creation,
Joe Camel.
I found Mike to be a delightfully entertaining raconteur.
His design career dates back to the early 1960s, and his
life is jam-packed with amazing adventures and significant
accomplishments. I could have easily built a full feature profile
from our conversation, but I’d only been allocated one page
spread. And so, when trimming my text I kept a tight focus
on a single topic. I’m also most grateful to my Print editors,
Carol Stevens and Julie Lasky.
Keeping the magazine’s readership in mind, I put a design-
related comment up front
DOOLEY: When you and Scott Mednick debated the morality of
cigarette advertising at the ’93 AIGA conference he claimed that,
since you said you were willing to promote anything legal, by
extension that could include Hitler.
SALISBURY: That’s a cheap shot, an easy shot, but it’s not a
fair analogy. Cigarettes and the Nazi party don’t have anything
in common. You should compare what I do with what the
movie industry does with product placement instead. Ask
Oliver Stone why everybody in Natural Born Killers was
smoking, and does he think it influences people, and is it
an unfair, subliminal influence.
Next I moved on to specifics.
DOOLEY: Did Camel choose you for your reputation for reaching the
youth market?
Salisbury: They came to me because of all the movie work
and nostalgic, retro advertising I’ve done. The original concept
was to reprise old motion picture posters and have heroes like
Humphrey Bogart and Gary Cooper smoking Camels, but it
bombed because the target audience doesn’t know or care about
old movies. Then we put a camel’s head on Sam Spade and they
still didn’t understand it. But when we gave him the Miami
Vice look, it got great test response, and that became
the campaign.
Camel later ran a campaign with a “Pleasure to Burn“
tagline, in the mid-2000s. It used a pulp detective-style
character wearing a period trench coat and fedora. It also
closely resembled Mike’s early, retro drawings. When I
showed it to him recently he just shrugged and told me
that’s how the ad game is played.
Next, I took advantage of Mike’s Miami Vice comment as an
opportunity to hit the subliminal snout issue.
DOOLEY: That raises a side issue: some people claim Joe Camel is a
phallic symbol. Were you really thinking of Don Johnson’s johnson?
[See: I can’t stop myself.]
SALISBURY: I never thought of that until some lady called
me and said, “Isn’t that like a dick?“ I was just trying to make
this stupid head have some kind of expression I could change
from ad to ad, and I remembered how Sean Connery as James
Bond could move his eyebrows so expressively. So I ripped off
his eyes and eyebrows and Don Johnson’s hair.
I assume readers hate being bogged down with numbers as
much as I do. So rather than cite specifics statistics I tossed out
a generality that worked just as well.
DOOLEY: Besides women, kids are the only way for the tobacco in-
dustry to expand its market, and Camel’s share among teenagers has
been rising astronomically.
SALISBURY: Camel wasn’t going after new smokers; they
were trying to get smokers to switch. They felt their target
market was a guy about 25, who had a truck and a T-shirt job.
Mike’s response was a dodge. But rather than press the matter di-
rectly, I decided to approach it from another angle. The fact that it
worked surprised me. I was also grateful for Mike’s magnanimity.
DOOLEY: But couldn’t a campaign directed at pickup drivers appeal
just as well to adolescants who want to feel more confident, improve
their image, be more popular?
SALISBURY: Now that’s a better, more reasonable argument
than comparing cigarettes to Hitler. What you’re saying is
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131
probably right. If this kid identifies with what’s targeted to
another, older guy, I agree it will have an influence.
You’re right, I sold a lot of cigarettes: sales went from $30
million a year to $330 million. I’d like to take all the credit,
but advertising doesn’t encourage smoking, it encourages
brand loyalty.
I’ll tell you the real reason kids smoke. They know it’s bad
for them but they see the guys in Guns ’n’ Roses [yes, it was
1996], and Madonna and all their heroes in movies and music
videos smoking. I remember seeing James Dean smoke in
movies and thinking that was cool, and I don’t think I was
aware of cigarette advertising.
It’s also a way they can rebel and piss off their parents.
Their parents aren’t going to smoke, they’re all vegetarians
and New-Agers.
And kids will choose Camel because it’s not their father’s
brand: it’s not Marlboro. And maybe they’re also more aware
of Camel because of what I did.
Our conversation had been easygoing throughout, but at this
point I felt even more comfortable. I continued to press the issue.
DOOLEY: But Joe Camel is as much an icon as Madonna: Each can
contribute subliminally to the behavior of an insecure adolescent.
SaliSbury: You’re right, I’m probably responsible, guilty
as charged. If advertising, product placement, manufacture,
sales, and government subsidies encourage people to smoke,
then I’m part of that whole machinery.
Again, I was surprised. This time it was because it seemed
that, in the campaign’s nine years, Mike was confronting,
and even conceding, on this issue for the first time. My
next question was meant to raise the human equation.
Dooley: Do you feel any responsibility about what you advertise?
SaliSbury: I figure the people who smoke have made their
own decision. I feel a responsibility to myself. I think about
whether I should be a part of something I wouldn’t encour-
age my own kids to do. I actually turned the job down at first.
But they kept coming back and I got caught up in doing it as
a problem-solving exercise, and that probably took over the
morality issue at some point, like the accelerator of a jet plane.
In all honesty, I really didn’t think I’d be good at selling
cigarettes. I didn’t think we could knock Marlboro out.
I regularly use Mike’s answer to introduce an ethics discussion
with my design history students. It also works as a lead-in to
Tibor Kalman’s “First Things First“ manifesto of 1999.
There’s an old adage that says to save your toughest ques-
tion, the one you’re not sure what the reaction will be, until
the end. That way, if your interviewee is insulted enough to
cut the conversation short, you’ll still have accumulated plenty
There’s an old adage that says to save your toughest question,
the one you’re not sure what the reaction will be,
until the end. That way, if your interviewee is insulted
enough to cut the conversation short, you’ll still have
accumulated plenty of material.
(Ray)
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