page_title: Bull Durham Smoking Tobacco
section_title: Promotion Campaigns
hierarchical_section_title: Bull Durham Smoking Tobacco / Advertising the “Bull Durham Brand” / Successful advertising campaigns / Promotion Campaigns
caption_attribution_description: English: Full page newspaper advertisement for "Bull" Durham Smoking Tobacco, featuring information about their "Hitting the Bull" Campaign.
context_page_description: Bull Durham Smoking Tobacco, also known as “Genuine Bull Durham Smoking Tobacco, ” was a world-famous brand of loose-leaf tobacco manufactured by W.T. Blackwell and Company in Durham, North Carolina. that originated around the 1850s and remained in production until August 15, 1988. Over the years, the brand often changed ownership, yet continued to be one of the most successful tobacco brands of all time. The brand is most commonly associated with its highly successful advertising campaigns that revolutionized the advertising industry. William Thomas Blackwell, an original investor and owner of the Blackwell Company, contributed greatly to the success of the product. Blackwell and his company’s tactics with the brand paved the way for other corporations to succeed through the acquisition of the Bull Durham trademark. The success of the product ultimately is due to the successful advertising campaigns that made Durham world famous, brought jobs to the city, and made Durham the tobacco capital of the United States.
context_section_description: In addition to slogans the Blackwell Company used promotions to increase sales of Bull Durham Tobacco. One promotion Blackwell ran gave soap to the merchants that sold their product. The company offered a bar of soap for each pound of tobacco a salesman purchased or 30 bars of soap for every 25 pounds purchased. Merchants could offer promotions in their own store, sell the soap, or use the soap themselves. Salesmen bought Bull Durham in bulk in order to reap the rewards of the soap, in turn increasing the total sales of Bull Durham.
  The Blackwell Company also ran a coupon campaign that offered “free” goods to the consumers of the Bull Durham brand. Coupons were included in every pack of Bull Durham Tobacco. After a consumer had saved up a set amount of coupons he or she could cash them in for an item of equivalent value. For example, for 100 coupons and one dollar one could get a gold plated watch. There were over 180 rewards each costing a different number of coupons. This advertising style was unique for its time and increased sales as people had double the incentive to buy the product. This style of advertising is still seen in companies today. The company and especially Carr used every angle of advertising they could think of in order to promote Bull Durham. These advertising techniques were completely unique for their time and many of the methods have greatly influenced modern day advertising.
caption: Hitting the Bull Campaign
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