Pall Mall (cigarette) - History

History

The Pall Mall brand was introduced in 1899 by the Butler & Butler Company (UK) in an attempt to cater to the upper class with the first "premium" cigarette. It is named after Pall Mall, a well-known street in London.

In 1907, Pall Mall was acquired by American Tobacco with the sale of Butler & Butler. The new owners used the premium brand to test innovations in cigarette design, such as the "king-size" (now the standard size for cigarettes at 85mm), and a new way of stuffing tobacco that supposedly made cigarettes easier on the throat.

Pall Mall reached the height of its popularity in 1960 when it was the number one brand of cigarette in America. The gambles in design had paid off and so the company introduced "longs", or 100mm cigarettes (again creating a standard, this time for long cigarettes). It would later be edged out in 1966 by Winston cigarettes, when Pall Mall found that it could no longer compete with the advertising campaign "Winston tastes good like a cigarette should." Ironically, in the 1940s, Pall Mall had its own grammatically incorrect slogan which touted it as the cigarette which "travels the smoke further", referencing the longer 85mm length. Their famous slogan during the '50s and early '60s was "OUTSTANDING...and they are MILD!".

In 1994, Pall Mall and Lucky Strike were purchased by Brown & Williamson Tobacco Corporation as the former American Tobacco company shed its tobacco brands. Brown & Williamson merged with R. J. Reynolds Tobacco Company on July 30, 2004, with the surviving company taking the name, R. J. Reynolds Tobacco Company. R. J. Reynolds continues to make unfiltered and filtered styles of Pall Mall for the U.S. market, emphasizing the latter. British American Tobacco makes and sells Pall Mall outside the U.S.

Pall Mall currently is in the "Growth Brand" segment of the R.J. Reynolds brand portfolio. Within British American Tobacco, Pall Mall is one of their four drive brands. During the late-2000s recession, Pall Mall was marketed as a "premium product at a sub-premium price", which pushed the product from a 1.95 percent market share with a 1.6 billion quarterly volume in 2006 to 7.95 percent and 5.5 billion in third quarter 2010. This compares with former top-seller Camel, which has not performed as well over the period, with 8 percent share and 5.6 billion.

Pall Mall is now Reynolds' most popular cigarette, and third behind Marlboro and Newport (cigarette). In October 2012, Reynolds debuted two new versions of its menthol cigarette, Pall Mall Black, described as "full flavor", and Pall Mall White, called "smoother". The traditional menthol style is called Pall Mall Green.

Pall Mall is currently sold as a Canadian discount brand in Red (full-flavour) and Blue (light). Rothman's produces American-style Pall Mall cigarettes which are priced as a premium brand.