Birthday cheers for L&B

Imperial Tobacco brand Lambert & Butler variant L&B Blue has turned three years old and the firm is celebrating what it says has been a “thrilling three years” of sales growth.

L&B Blue’s third birthday was market by a celebratory promotional campaign open to all retailer members of the Imperial Tobacco Ignite Trade Partner Programme.

The ‘Hi to 20,000 points’ campaign invited retailers to collect up to 100 outer barcodes before submitting them using a barcode collection envelope to ignite. Points were then redeemed against Ignite prepaid MasterCards up to the cash value of £180.

Emma Stew, brand manager at Imperial Tobacco, said that L&B Blue was “designed to appeal to adult smokers seeking a lower-priced cigarette that also boasted Lambert & Butler’s brand pedigree,” and suggested the launch in 2014 had been a success.

“It quickly became extremely popular with value-seeking adult smokers, with range additions like Crushball helping it command a healthy 15% share of the UK economy FC sector,” she said.