Pall Mall cigarettes were introduced in 1899 by the Black Butler Company in an attempt to cater to the upper class with the first «premium» cigarette. It is named after Pall Mall , a well-known street in the St James’s area of London, which contains a number of the private clubs such people frequented.
In 1907, American Tobacco acquired Pall Mall cigarettes with the sale of Butler & Butler. The new owners used the premium brand to test innovations in cigarette design, such as, in 1939, the «king-size» (now the standard size for 85mm cigarettes, though today that includes filter length), and a new form of tobacco filler that supposedly made cigarettes easier on the throat.
Pall Mall cigarettes reached the height of popularity in 1960 when it was the number one cigarette brand. He was surpassed in 1966 by Winston. cigarettes , when Pall Mall found that it could no longer compete with the » Winston tastes good like a cigarette should » advertising campaign .In the 1940s, Pall Mall cigarettes had its own grammatically incorrect slogan promoting it as the cigarette that «travels the smoke the farthest», referencing the longest length of 85mm. Their famous catchphrase during the ’50s and early ’60s was «and they’re SOFT!»
In 1994, Brown & Williamson Tobacco Corporation bought Pall Mall and Lucky Strike when the former American Tobacco divested its tobacco brands. In 2001, Pall Mall was renamed the savings brand and introduced several varieties of filter cigarettes. Brown & Williamson merged with the RJ Reynolds Tobacco Company on July 30, 2004, with the surviving company taking the latter’s name.
Pall Mall is currently in the «Growing Brand» segment of the RJ Reynolds portfolio of brands. Within British American Tobacco, Pall Mall is one of its four unit brands. During the late 2000s recession , Pall Mall was marketed as a «premium product at a price below premium», which saw the product go from a 1.95% market share with a quarterly volume of 1.6 billion in 2006 at 7.95% and 5.5%. billion in the third quarter of 2010. This compares with former bestseller Camel, which hasn’t performed as well over the period, with an 8 percent share and $5.6 billion.