Smokin’? When teenagers were asked to choose their favorite cigarette ad, 22% of the girls aged 12 through 16, interviewed for a study that appeared online yesterday in the journal Pediatrics, picked a marketing campaign for Camel No. 9 cigarettes.

Camel No. 9 cigarettes targeted female smokers right from the start. After the brand was introduced by R.J. Reynolds in 2007, it was aggressively promoted with a series of branded party events in clubs and bars around the country where women could come for free cigarettes, massages and swag bags containing berry-flavored lip balm, cellphone jewelry, purses and wristbands. A marketing campaign in the pages of such upscale magazines as Vogue, Cosmopolitan and Glamour soon followed.

These print ads were pulled in 2008, says David Howard, a spokesman for R.J. Reynolds, noting that teen smoking rates continued to fall even after the Camel No. 9 ad campaign was introduced.

But co-author John Pierce of the Moores Cancer Center at the University of California-San Diego points out that teens, who don’t smoke but who can identify cigarette ads, run a 50% higher risk of developing the habit. About 80% of all smokers smoked their first cigarette before the age of 18.