A Whiff of War?
Associated Press
| Revision History | ||
|---|---|---|
| • December 1991-January 1992 | Newspaper: Funded by Syracuse University students. | |
| The Alternative Orange: Vol. 1, No. 3 (pp. 9) | ||
| • September 2, 2000 | Webpage:  . | |
| DocBook XML (DocBk XML V3.1.3) from original. | ||
The following AP story demonstrates the marriage of good old American ingenuity and the spirit of global capitalist competition in the arms trade. It’s comforting to know these arms manufacturers have a sense of humor when it comes to making a killing.
DALLAS (AP) You can now buy a whiff of war.
Weapons maker BEI Defense Systems proudly is promoting its "extraordinarily lethal” Flechette rockets with scratch-and-sniff ads.
The trade ads, with the slogan “The Smell of Victory," released the smell of cordite, the rocket explosion aroma.
"My advertising usually gets lost in magazines,” said BEI's George Coutoumanos, who came up with the idea to boost the $47 million in defense contracts his firm won last year.
"I usually get buried by the big guys, the Boeings and the General Dynamics. Who’s going to read my ad when they can look at a beautiful F-16 (warjet) going over the countryside?"
"I’d really like to hire a major star and get them to sing and dance, but it doesn’t work that way,” Coutoumanos said. “And shooting off rockets on television isn’t really appropriate, I think."
"Next year, I’m going to do the 'Sound of Victory,’” he said. “You're going to run your thumbnail across some kind of strip and you will hear the explosions."
