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Anne Lee
Visual Culture Seminar
Eric Wilson
Advertising: Marlboro and the Marlboro Man
Consumerism. The single word defines the sole purpose of advertising. The
pictures, taglines, and storylines all put a spotlight on a given product, and make it
attractive for the consumers and their wallets to be seduced to give in. Of course those
consumers aren’t attracted to the people behind these lustful ads, as at the end of the day,
after mindlessly spending a huge sum of money on those spotlighted products, they hate
the ad men, known as the Mad Men during most of the 1900’s. They were the ones with
the genius and manipulative minds to come up with these pretty pictures and inspirational
lines to make the consumers want to buy something they would not touch after the
purchase. But these advertisements were the key for the marketing businesses and the
sales—which shows the effect of advertising on products’ sales. The cigarette business is
a good example of this, as Marlboro went from being virtually unknown to becoming the
top cigarette brand in the country. The growth of the company was obviously through the
advertising strategies, showing the leverage advertising has for the success of companies.
The infamous cowboy and beloved cigarettes that we know as Marlboro today
was not always the case. Being first introduced to the public during the 1920’s holding
the tagline of “Mild as May”, the target consumer was a female audience. The ads
consisted a theme of a feminine hand holding a cigarette, but despite the efforts of their
next tagline of “Ivory Tips”,1 Marlboro was unnoticed, and at the rare times it was, it
1 West, Katherine M. "The Marlboro Man: The Making of an American Image."
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already had an effeminate reputation amongst the crowd. With competing brands such as
Camels, Lucky Strike’s, and Chesterfields, the concept of having a red tip for lipstick
smearing prevention was not going to keep Marlboro on the shelves, and as the World
War started, they were eventually taken off.
With the brand being taken off shelves, there was a window of chance to have
remarketing to take place. The World War had the tobacco companies and the consumers
rationalize the tobacco used, and naturally, the prices of the cigarette packs went up
slowly. Along with the prices going up, the scare of lung cancer took place, and the
smokers began to get nervous and saw the need to stop buying. Of course, the addiction
of nicotine was unknown at that time so when the smokers saw that they could not just
stop smoking, they looked for an alternative. With this, Phillip Morris saw the chance of
remarketing, as Marlboro was a filtered cigarette brand, which was why they were
viewed to be more of a feminine product. Morris brilliantly saw the chance to use the
filter as a way to manipulate and advertise that it was safer and that it would lower the
chance of lung cancer, as it would “filter” away the toxins. He changed the target sex to
males, and started to play with different types of what people would consider a “man.”
There were many ideas and concepts that followed, such as the “Tattoo Man” which
featured men all rugged and virtually known as a common man with tattoos and different
types of uniforms, and different famous athletes at the time, but “by 1963 the tattoo had
disappeared and the Marlboro Man had emerged as the exclusive inhabitant of the
Marlboro commercials.”2
2 Lohof, Bruce A. The Higher Meaning of Marlboro Cigarettes. Tiffin, Ohio: American Studies Program.
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The Marlboro Man became a significant part of the Marlboro success and still is
known to be one of the most successful advertising campaigns in history. The man
represented the true American man, with the rugged appearance and the tough image
displayed, it recaptured the image of the once “Mild as May” and feminine Marlboro and
turned it into the manly cigarette. The filter became a factor of better taste, and a
manipulative tool to stray away from lung cancer. The fact that Marlboro had been
around for a while was a useful fact to advertise that the brand was “historic” and “old
fashioned” in taste and quality. With the change in the imaging and branding, it drew
more male customers, and the loyal customers of the bigger brands (such as Camels,
Lucky Strike’s and Chesterfields) who felt betrayed by the lung cancer scare.
As with any good campaign, the tagline was also very popular too. One of the
most famous ones was “Welcome to Marlboro Country.” Marlboro Country is essentially
Montana. A Montana that has been depicted as: “The inhumanly virginal landscape: the
atrocious magnificence of the mountains, the illimitable brute fact of the prairies’ –this is
Marlboro Country.”2 With this image being visualized by the consumers and the
Marlboro Man “epitomiz[ing] the awesome, primitive environment in which he lives”2,
the overall brand became the visual definition of the American lifestyle. Because of this,
the cigarette brand not only became a product of the consumers, but also a lifestyle. The
campaign became something personal to the consumer, and instead of being an additional
product to buy, it became a necessity in order for their lives to be consistent. The
Marlboro Man and Marlboro Country not only became a signature icon, but a place that
2 Lohof, Bruce A. The Higher Meaning of Marlboro Cigarettes. Tiffin, Ohio: American Studies Program.
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people could go to for a good taste of cigarettes and an enjoyment of that vast, majestic
space of Montana.
The iconic Marlboro Man did not stop influencing and intriguing in the States.
After the cigarette brand became the best-selling brand nationwide, Marlboro spread
internationally. With technology rapidly evolving, the campaigns went from posters to
billboards to television. The digital campaigns would be screened nation and worldwide,
achieving the international consumer market. From the West to the East, the campaign
spread, along with the idealistic lifestyle of Marlboro Country. It was a country that
united the people across the globe, and they all looked up to the one man that was holding
the cigarette, smiling proudly, on top of a horse of a property. The consumers were not
just hooked on the product, they were hooked on the idea and promise the advertisement
gave them. The iconic branding Marlboro made of themselves, of the cowboys riding
through the fields, paid off when the law for banning cigarette advertising went through.
The increasing studies of effects of smoking caused and resulted in advertising tobacco to
be stopped.6 Despite it all, Marlboro had nothing to worry about, as they no longer
needed the constant reminding for the consumers— as soon as a cowboy, or any
resemblance to the ads was shown or mentioned, everyone was already reminded of the
cigarettes.
From being at the bottom, barely having any percentile in the market, “within just
a year Marlboro from niche brand with 1% market share went to top 4 position in the
U.S. market. By 1972, Marlboro was the most popular cigarettes brand, and it holds this
position since then.”4 During the 1920’s through the 1940’s, women mainly smoked
4 Wrzosiński, Piotr. "A Marlboro Man Story - Tobacco Advertising - K-Message." K-Message. January 28, 2014.
6 "Tobacco Advertising." Politics.co.uk. Health Department. 2012.
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Marlboro. The light blend, ivory tips, and filter were the main reasons as to why “people
regarded the old ivory- tipped Marlboro as sissy. (That's the way it had been advertised“America's luxury cigarette"-in a very plush atmosphere.)”5 When they reinvented
themselves, Marlboro not only changed the advertising, but also the blend, though they
kept the filter. By keeping the filter, Phillip Morris, as mentioned before, used it as a way
to manipulate the public by having them think that it would prevent the lung cancer that
the medical field was advertising and linking to cigarettes. This history shows the drastic,
180 degree change the company went through throughout the decades, and shows how
the company went from being unknown to jumping over long standing, big brands
(Camels, Lucky Strike’s, etc) and becoming the best-selling cigarette brand.
The way Marlboro rebranded and effortlessly spread their cigarettes nation and
worldwide was always fascinating. Many have admired their marketing strategies and
advertisements, so their quick rise to fame could not be ignored by anyone—especially
the other competing cigarette brands that have been around. One of those brands was
Camel’s—the best-selling brand then.
In the 1920’s when Marlboro was unpopular, Camel’s succeeded with their
advertising by placing a handsome man, showing him enjoying the smooth blend. The
consumers loved it, and thus, for a while, Camel’s was the best-selling brand of cigarettes
in America. Later, they switched over to displaying pampered women having a luxurious
life to target the young women, and after that they started to print ads with children and
families. Comparing the history of Camel’s and Marlboro ads, it seems to be that when
the brands advertised with the man, the sales were up. Camel’s just had a head start with
5 Burnett, Leo. "The Marlboro Story." The New Yorker.
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their ‘perfect’ man, and later when Marlboro Man was introduced, the consumers ran
straight to him, dropping the images of families and pampered women.
During the late 1900’s, R. J. Reynolds introduced the mascot for Camel’s: Joe
Camel. The original strategy for this character was to increase the sales of young adults,
which would result in bigger revenue at the end. Later, that strategy overrode to the
Marlboro smokers, feeding off the competition already in-between the two brands. Joe
Camel was later accused of attracting children to the cigarettes, and the accusation was
later proved true when a test on 5 year olds was done. The children were able to connect
the camel to cigarettes as well as connecting Disney to Mickey Mouse.
These two brands are both examples of the strength in advertising. Without it, the
two would not have been able to attract the consumers to loyalty as well as they have
done with advertising strategies. The taglines, representation, and stories behind each of
the strategies was what made the revenues and rankings in the market. The consumers
would identify with the image more than the product itself, because as mentioned before,
they not only buy the product, but also into the lifestyle the product promises them.
There is no way to say for sure, as there are no hard evidence for a hypothetical
setting, but Marlboro would not be where it is today if there were no re-branding or
advertising change. The competition then was too much with the brands already have
taken their ranks in the market, and the fact that the brand was taken off the shelves once
was not a good sign that they were going back up. Phillip Morris picked up brilliantly the
new approach to Marlboro’s advertising and successfully changed the image of the brand
completely. The advertisement help is clearly shown in the progress of Marlboro’s
growth in its fame. The mind is a powerful and an impressionable thing. The way Philip
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Morris manipulated the minds of many consumers for his brand to sell with the help of
re-branding and advertising; he took advantage and won the minds of many. By
implanting the idea of Marlboro Country in the minds of America, and then spreading it
worldwide, he included his cigarettes in the idea of the American Dream.
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Bibliography
1.
West, Katherine M. "The Marlboro Man: The Making of an American
Image." Accessed April 24, 2015.
2.
Lohof, Bruce A. The Higher Meaning of Marlboro Cigarettes. Tiffin, Ohio:
American Studies Program.
3.
"The Marlboro Man." Adage. http://adage.com/article/special-report-theadvertising-century/marlboro-man/140170/.
4.
Wrzosiński, Piotr. “A Marlboro Man Story” K-Message. January 28, 2014.
http://www.k-message.com/marlboro-man-story/.
5.
6.
Burnett, Leo. "The Marlboro Story." The New Yorker.
"Tobacco Advertising." Politics.co.uk. Health Department. 2012.