Origins
Philip Morris & Co. (now Altria) originally introduced the Marlboro brand as a woman's cigarette in 1924. Starting in the early 1950s, the cigarette industry began to focus on promoting filtered cigarettes as a response to the emerging scientific data about harmful effects of smoking.[6] Under the notion that filtered cigarettes were safer, Marlboro, as well as other brands, started to be sold with filters. However, filtered cigarettes, and Marlboro in particular, were considered women's cigarettes.[7] During market research in the 1950s, men indicated that while they would consider switching to a filtered cigarette, they were concerned about being seen smoking a cigarette marketed to women.[8]
The repositioning of Marlboro as a men's cigarette was handled by Chicago advertiser Leo Burnett. Most filtered cigarette advertising sought to make claims about the technology behind the filter: Through the use of complex terminology and scientific claims regarding the filter, the cigarette industry wanted to ease fears about the harmful effects of cigarette smoking. However, Leo Burnett decided to address these fears through an entirely different approach: creating ads completely devoid of health concerns or health claims of the filtered cigarette. Burnett felt that making claims about the effectiveness of filters furthered concerns of smoking's long-term effects.
The proposed campaign was to use manly figures: sea captains, weightlifters, war correspondents, construction workers, etc. The cowboy was to have been the first in this series.[8] Burnett's inspiration for the exceedingly masculine "Marlboro Man" icon came in 1949 from an issue of Life magazine, whose photograph (shot by Leonard McCombe) and story of Texas cowboy Clarence Hailey Long Jr. caught his attention.[9] Within a year, Marlboro's market share rose from less than 1% to the fourth best-selling brand, convincing Philip Morris to drop the other manly figures and stick with the cowboy.[8] In the mid Fifties, the cowboy image was popularized by actor Paul Birch in 3 page magazine ads and TV ads.
Using another approach to expand the Marlboro Man market base, Philip Morris felt the prime market was "post adolescent kids who were just beginning to smoke as a way of declaring their independence from their parents".[10]
When the new Marlboro Country theme opened in late 1963, the actors utilized as Marlboro Man were replaced, for the most part, with real working cowboys, and the campaign began using Elmer Bernstein's 1960 theme music from The Magnificent Seven. In 1963, at the 6666 Ranch in Guthrie, Texas, they discovered Carl 'Big-un' Bradley. He was the first real cowboy they used, and from then on the lead Marlboro men were real cowboys, rodeo riders, and stuntmen.[11][12] Another of this new breed of real cowboys was Max Bryan "Turk" Robinson, of Hugo, Oklahoma, who said he was recruited for the role while at a rodeo simply standing around behind the chutes, as was the custom for cowboys who had not yet ridden their event. It took only a few years for the results to register: By 1972, the new Marlboro Man had so much appeal that Marlboro was catapulted to the top of the tobacco industry.
