Times Square Billboard
When RJR management declared that they could see everything the company owned from the Reynolds Building, the statement wasn’t quite accurate. There was a famous symbol of RJR several hundred miles from Winston-Salem in a place that couldn’t have been more different from the tobacco town.
In 1941, Reynolds introduced what would become the most famous billboard in history – the Camel cigarette smoking sign in Time Square. The billboard was attached to the Claridge Hotel and blew a smoke ring every four seconds for twenty-five years, until 1966.
This billboard had many variations. Early in my career at Reynolds, my boss and I were taking inventory in one of the packaging warehouses when we came across one of the famous Time Square signs stored in a dark corner. It was eerie to discover this famous icon, that millions of people had seen in New York, tucked away, perhaps even to this day, in an obscure warehouse.
“Camel – Times Square.” Accessed July 5, 2020. https://www.google.com/search?q=camel+times +square+billboard&rlz=1C1CHBD_enUS779US779&oq=camel+times+square+bi&aqs=chrome.0.0j69i57j0l2.5671j0j4&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8