marlboro Fun
The first marlboro men weren’t limited to cowboys. They were all sorts of rugged individuals who smoked their cigarettes while performing equally manly tasks, from fixing their cars to fishing or hunting. The rather abrupt advertising about-face sparked a similar turn in sales. By 1957, Marlboro’s sales were skyrocketing. Unfortunately for Philip Morris, however, 1957 also brought with it one of the first rounds of negative publicity. A study published in Reader’s Digest linked smoking with cancer. In response, Marlboro once again turned to show its softer side. But this time it made sure to do so in a way that might retain the masculine appeal the company had worked so hard to cultivate, while calming the nerves of anxious smokers. Instead of focusing on the mysterious tattooed Man, it turned the camera to sultry singer Julie London, who would share a smoke with her lucky male companion in between verses of the dreamy new "Settle Back With a Marlboro" theme. These commercials, paired with print ads that showed apparently wealthy men relaxing for a smoke, lasted for a while. But as American politics became more complicated in the 1960s, Jack Landry, the Marlboro brand manager at Philip Morris, saw an opening into which the cowboy fit like a glove. "In a world that was becoming increasingly complex and frustrating for the ordinary man," Landry explained, "the cowboy represented an antithesis — a man whose environment was simplistic and relatively pressure free. He was his own man in a world he owned."
