Having realized the power of branding, the public health folks have set their sights on taking all logos off of cigarette packaging. A creative solution. Too bad logos and branding are not the same thing.

It's an easy mistake to make. When you're asked to think about the brand of McDonald's, you probably picture the golden arches. When you're asked to think about the brand of Ford, I'm sure the blue oval springs to mind. It may be a little bit zen (or at least Heisenbergian), but the very act of consciously thinking about branding prevents you from experiencing it.

I've talked about some of these issues, independent of cigarettes, before.

To illustrate the difference consider, "And after the funeral, we're all going to get brunch at McDonald's". Chances are you didn't stop to think about their logo before deciding the Mickey D's is a less than respectful destination for a wake. The brand of a thing is slippery; sensory cues like logos and jingles become twisted up with prior experience with the product or service to create a subconscious soup of how something feels to you.

Design considerations of the branding of cigarettes is well-tread ground. The film "Thank You for Smoking" and its fabulous opening credits does a respectful job. There's also the series premiere of designer favorite "Mad Men", containing this gem:

This is the greatest advertising opportunity since the invention of cereal. We have six identical companies making six identical products. We can say anything we want.

So, in many respects, the UK government finally deciding to pay attention to cigarette branding and "considering outlawing the use of logos, colours and graphics on packets and requiring them to be sold in plain packaging" is showing up un-fashionably late to the party.

The folks over at We Made This have a concept sketch of what that might look like. It's kinda sexy and dangerous. It's not, of course, sexy or dangerous. That's just the transparency of Helvetica set in black on a white background allowing whatever else you already think about cigarettes to shine through. The prevalence of the International Typographical Style in modern society has repackaged "plain packaging".

Let's really think about logos for a moment. Do my health-conscious, eco-friendly activist friends really choose Brand "A" because of their unwavering commitment to Indigenous rights? Or even their hatred of cloven-hoofed mammals? No, it's the subconscious soup!

Don't get me wrong. Stripping logos off the packaging will no doubt have some effect. Analysts suggest that, "plain packaging would prompt many smokers to abandon the premium brands such as Marlboro and Benson and Hedges, and instead switch to much cheaper makes". This is bad news for the tobacco companies and worse news for the public health folks, who were hoping to curb smoking—not drive an exodus.

The real problem here is not any cigarette's individual brand, but the brand of smoking.

As long as guys like Don Draper include "drink and smoke constantly" in their guide to picking up women, it's unlikely that striking the individual tobacco companies will lead to a decrease in rates of smoking.

In fact, I'd go so far as to say that as a persecuted pastime, smoking could gain an even stronger brand as cool, rebellious, revolutionary, and of course sexy and dangerous. I wouldn't be surprised to see other products try to associate themselves with smoking in hopes that the brand would rub off on them.