Broome, Western Australia: I’d walk a camel for a mile

If you’re old enough, you may think that’s an amusing headline. If you’re not, please allow me to explain:

For decades, Camel cigarettes’ advertising used the same headline over and over and over again. Each ad showed a different suave, sophisticated customer saying, “I’d walk a mile for a Camel.”

(Let’s just ignore the fact smoking enough of those Camels would result in chronic emphysema and COPD that would inhibit a smoker’s ability to walk across the street, much less a mile.)

You can ride camels on the beach here in Broome. So what I did there, you see, was reverse a few words in the old cigarette headline. Instead of reading “I’d walk a mile for a camel,” it now reads “I’d walk a camel for a mile.”

Get it? Get it?

Oh, my god. Genius.

(Just kidding. That’s the kind of quick and easy kind of headline you learn how to do your first month in advertising.)

Bad headlines aside, we really do love coming to Broome’s Cable Beach to see the nightly camel caravan swaying down the sand at sunset. They’re so big, so majestic, so damn handsome.