Dakota is one of the infamous names for Cigarette and Tobacco Brands and also a renowned brand of one of the world leaders in the manufacture of cigarettes.
The Dakota brand of cigarettes was launched in the year 1990. Introduced by the R.J. Reynolds Tobacco, it was specially designed for a particular segment of the society, which was termed as the “blue-collar women”. This was a category of women who fell in the category of so called “virile white females”. Most of them belonged to lower middle class and working class families, or who were engaged in jobs pertaining to the working class, like working in factories. The company, through the brand of Dakota, targeted them as a class who would fall for the notion of adventurous pastimes and exciting and unconventional ways of spending leisure.
The R.J. Reynolds Tobacco company is headquartered in Winston-Salem in North Carolina, Dakota in USA.
Targeted at luring in these women, Dakota was also launched to cajole away the same category of men – that is “blue-collar men” – in an attempt to recapture the male segment from Marlboro.
Launched with much hype and promotion, Dakota gained reputation for all the wrong reasons. The promotional advertisement featured a message that did not go down well with the public. This showed in the sales figures of Dakota, finally leading the Dakota brand to be withdrawn from the markets.
The R.J. Reynolds Tobacco, however, has other successful cigarette brands like Doral, Camel, Winston, Kool, Eclipse, Salem, Pall Mall and Export A. In fact, the camel brand of cigarettes has quite a strong and dominant male clientele which did not waver even after the fiasco of Dakota.
