marlboro cigarettes
Somewhere, there exists an America inhabited solely by characters from product advertising campaigns. Imagine Mr. Clean taking up residence in our country’s kitchens, resting his bald pate in the broom closet and renting out cabinet space to the Jolly Green Giant, who rumbles off to tend the farmlands with the dawn. In such a landscape, a single character would surely dominate the American West. The California Raisins might occupy the Hollywood hills, but from the Rocky Mountains to the Mississippi, no one could lasso customers like the marlboro Man. While he may not be one of the most beloved characters, the Marlboro Man — shady past and all — was a fixture of our culture for decades. When it came to selling cigarettes, the cowboy got the job done. For Morning Edition, NPR’s Kathleen Schalch reports on the origins of the icon that helped to transform from the lowliest of brands in Philip Morris’ stable of cigarettes into the company’s prize money winner. In the 1920s, Marlboro was first advertised as a premium cigarette for women, a milder version of the smokes well dressed men might puff on after dinner. But the brand never took hold, and by the 1950s concerns over the connection between smoking and cancer drove many smokers to filtered brands. Philip Morris didn’t have a filtered cigarette, so it scrapped the old campaign in favor of re-launching marlboro as the company’s filtered alternative. After deciding to introduce filters to the brand, Marlboro executives still had the brand’s feminine image to deal with. As Schalch reports, it didn’t help that filtered cigarettes were considered softer versions of the real thing, cigarettes for sissies. For help, Marlboro turned to Leo Burnett’s advertising company. In a 1972 documentary, Burnett recalled the brainstorming session in which they stumbled upon their icon. "I said, ‘What’s the most masculine symbol you can think of?’ And right off the top of his head one of these writers spoke up and said a cowboy. And I said, ‘That’s for sure.’"
