Bic Finally Finds People Who Keep Losing Their Lighters

Bic has enlisted Snoop Dogg, Willie Nelson and Martha Stewart to help sell lighters to American marijuana users, an alliance that suggests every conceivable lifestyle is now represented except the person who knows where the lighter went.

The venerable French maker of pens, razors and lighters has discovered cannabis rather late in life and decided that legal weed in the United States could provide a useful spark for profits. Its plan is to persuade more marijuana smokers to flick its products rather than whatever unbranded lighter happens to be lurking beneath the sofa cushions.

To do so, Bic is reviving “Flick my Bic”, its advertising slogan from the 1970s. The phrase has evidently spent the intervening decades waiting patiently for a market whose customers require fire regularly and may, on occasion, need to buy the same small portable object again.

New chief executive Rob Versloot believes the opportunity in America is substantial. He also brings some geographical authority to the subject.

“I’m from Amsterdam, but I can tell you that marijuana use in the United States is progressing much more quickly than it ever did in the Netherlands,” Versloot insisted.

Twenty US states have legalised weed, giving the company a large and growing population of potential customers. “There’s a sizeable market to conquer,” he said.

Bic’s new lighter advertisements will therefore feature celebrity cannabis enthusiasts Snoop Dogg and Willie Nelson, along with lifestyle maven Martha Stewart. It is a line-up broad enough to cover rap, country music and gracious domestic arrangements, all united by the practical matter of producing a flame.

For Bic, better known across generations for disposable pens, razors and lighters, this is less a radical reinvention than the identification of a group already unusually familiar with one-third of its product range. The company is not required to devise a new gadget, change its basic purpose or explain why anyone might want one. It merely needs legal marijuana users to select a Bic when the familiar question goes round the room.

The next step is to roll out the cheeky celebrity campaign and put the old slogan back to work as legalisation expands. Having spent half a century with “Flick my Bic” available, the company has finally found an American audience for whom flicking a lighter is not an abstract proposition but part of the evening’s arrangements.