Marlboro Man

The Marlboro Man is a figure that was used in tobacco advertising campaigns for Marlboro cigarettes. In the United States, where the campaign originated, it was used from 1954 to 1999. The Marlboro Man was first conceived by advertising executive Leo Burnett in 1954. The images initially featured rugged men portrayed in a variety of roles but later primarily featured a rugged cowboy or cowboys in picturesque wild terrain. The ads were originally conceived as a way to popularize filtered cigarettes, which at the time were considered feminine.
The campaign, created by Leo Burnett Worldwide, is said to be one of the most brilliant advertisement campaigns of all time. It transformed a feminine brand carrying the slogan "Mild as May" into a masculine one in a matter of months. Ellen Merlo, the vice president of marketing services at Philip Morris, was quoted in a 1989 Marlboro advertisement: "We perceive Formula One and Indy car racing as adding, if you will, a modern-day dimension to the Marlboro Man. The image of Marlboro is very rugged, individualistic, heroic. And so is this style of auto racing. From an image standpoint, the fit is good.”
Cowboys proved to be popular, which led to the "Marlboro Cowboy" and "Marlboro Country" campaigns.
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. Under the misconception 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. 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.
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 void 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. 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. 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. 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".
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. 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.
Initially, cowboy commercials involving the Marlboro Man featured paid models, such as William Thourlby, pretending to carry out cowboy tasks. However, Burnett felt that the commercials lacked authenticity, as it was apparent that the subjects were not real cowboys and did not have the desired rugged look. One of the finest was a non-smoking rodeo cowboy, Max Bryan "Turk" Robinson, who was recruited at a rodeo. Another, Robert C. Norris, was recruited after it was discovered he was a friend of John Wayne. He also never smoked, and after a twelve-year run as a Marlboro Man, quit the role to avoid badly influencing his children. He died, age 90, in 2019.
Leo Burnett was not satisfied with the cowboy actors found. Broadway and MGM movie actor Christian Haren won the role as the first Marlboro Man in the early 1960s as he looked the part. Burnett then came across Darrell Winfield, who worked on a ranch, after a cattle rancher by the name Keith Alexander declined the role because he did not believe in smoking. Leo Burnett's creative director was awed when he first saw Winfield: "I had seen cowboys, but I had never seen one that just really, like, he sort of scared the hell out of me (as he was so much a real cowboy)". Winfield's immediate authenticity led to his 20-year run as the Marlboro Man, which lasted until the late 1980s. Upon Winfield's retirement, Philip Morris reportedly spent $300 million searching for a new Marlboro Man.
In 1974, Marlboro's marketing agency discovered rancher Herf Ingersoll at a rodeo in Augusta, Montana, and hired him to be photographed as the Marlboro Man.
After appearing as the Marlboro Man in 1987 advertising, former rodeo cowboy Brad Johnson landed a lead role in Steven Spielberg's feature film Always (1989), with Holly Hunter and Richard Dreyfuss.
The use of the Marlboro Man campaign had very significant and immediate effects on sales. In 1955, when the Marlboro Man campaign was started, sales were at $5 billion. By 1957, sales were at $20 billion, representing a 300% increase within two years. Philip Morris easily overcame growing health concerns through the Marlboro Man campaign, highlighting the success as well as the tobacco industry's strong ability to use mass marketing to influence and manipulate the public.
The immediate success of the Marlboro Man campaign led to heavy imitation. Old Golds adopted the tagline marking it a cigarette for "independields".
Five men who appeared in Marlboro-related advertisements — Wayne McLaren, David McLean, Dick Hammer, Eric Lawson and Jerome Edward Jackson, aka Tobin Jackson — died of smoking-related diseases, thus earning Marlboro cigarettes, specifically Marlboro Reds, the nickname "cowboy killers".
Wayne McLaren testified in favor of anti-smoking legislation at the age of 51. During the time of McLaren's anti-smoking activism, Philip Morris denied that McLaren ever appeared in a Marlboro ad, a position it later amended to maintain that while he did appear in ads, he was not the Marlboro Man; Winfield held that title. In response, McLaren produced an affidavit from a talent agency that had represented him, along with a pay check stub, asserting he had been paid for work on a 'Marlboro print' job. McLaren died before his 52nd birthday in 1992.
David McLean died of lung cancer at the age 73 in 1995. After his death, his widow, Lilo McLean, sued Philip Morris, claiming that McLean's disease was brought on because he had to smoke multiple packs of cigarettes during advertising shoots. Her case was dismissed and she was forced to pay the cigarette company's court case costs.
Eric Lawson, who appeared in Marlboro print ads from 1978 to 1981, died at the age of 72 on January 10, 2014, of respiratory failure due to chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, or COPD. A smoker since age 14, Lawson later appeared in an anti-smoking commercial that parodied the Marlboro Man, and also in an Entertainment Tonight segment to discuss the negative effects of smoking.
Jerome Edward Jackson, aka Tobin Jackson, died of lung cancer in 2008.
Marlboro television and print ads used several real cowboys.
The Cowboy and His Elephant, which is ostensibly a biography of Bob Norris and mainly focuses on his raising an elephant on his ranch, also describes how Norris came to be photographed for Life magazine and become the Marlboro Man for the next twelve years.
From 1964 to 1978, Wayne Dunafon was a "Marlboro Man". He was a rancher in Kansas in addition to a long-time competitive rodeo rider. He died of natural causes in 2001.
The most famous of the 'Marlboro Men' lived a long life after fading from the public limelight. Darrell Winfield, a resident of Riverton, Wyoming, was the longest living Marlboro Man to appear on billboards and in advertisements. Leo Burnett Ad Agency discovered him in 1968 while he was working on the Quarter Circle 5 Ranch in Wyoming. Winfield's chiselled rugged good looks made him the macho face of Marlboro cigarettes on television, in newspapers, magazines and on billboards, from the 1968 to 1989. Winfield was survived by his wife, a son, five daughters, and grandchildren.
In many countries, the Marlboro Man is an icon of the past due to increasing pressure on tobacco advertising for health reasons, especially where the practice of smoking appears to be celebrated or glorified. The deaths described above may also have made it more difficult to use the campaign without attracting negative comment. The Marlboro Man image continued into the 21st century in countries such as Germany, Poland and the Czech Republic. It last appeared late 2012 in Indonesia, where such cigarette advertisements are still allowed in the country. A year later, in May 2013, it had been officially replaced by Be Marlboro campaign.
It still continues (on tobacco vending machines, for example) in the United States and Japan, where smoking is widespread in the male population at nearly 30%.
Death in the West, a Thames Television documentary, is an exposé of the cigarette industry that aired on British television in 1976. In its March/April 1996 issue, Mother Jones said of Death in the West: "It is one of the most powerful anti-smoking films ever made. You will never see it." The second sentence refers to the fact that Philip Morris sued the filmmakers, and in a 1979 secret settlement all copies were suppressed. However, Professor Stanton Glantz released the film and San Francisco's then-NBC affiliate KRON-TV aired the documentary in May 1982.
The California Nonsmokers' Rights Foundation, in cooperation with the Risk and Youth: Smoking Project Lawrence Hall of Science University of California, Berkeley, created a manual to accompany the film, titled "A Curriculum for Death in the West". The first two paragraphs of the Introduction read:
NBC Monitor produced an investigative TV report titled Death in the West (June 18, 1983), which is accessible at the Internet Archive.
In the 1996 episode of "Seinfeld" The Abstinence, Kramer was portrayed as the Marlboro man on a billboard in Times Square.