

"In 1963, at the 6666 Ranch in Guthrie, Texas, they discovered Carl 'Big-un' Bradley. 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. 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."
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In the mid Fifties, the cowboy image was popularized by actor Paul Birch in 3 page magazine ads and TV ads. 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. 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. The cowboy was to have been the first in this series. The proposed campaign was to use manly figures: sea captains, weightlifters, war correspondents, construction workers, etc. Burnett felt that making claims about the effectiveness of filters furthered concerns of smoking's long-term effects. 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. 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. The repositioning of Marlboro as a men's cigarette was handled by Chicago advertiser Leo Burnett. 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. However, filtered cigarettes, and Marlboro in particular, were considered women's cigarettes. Under the misconception that filtered cigarettes were safer, Marlboro, as well as other brands, started to be sold with filters. 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. (now Altria) originally introduced the Marlboro brand as a woman's cigarette in 1924. Ĭowboys proved to be popular, which led to the "Marlboro Cowboy" and "Marlboro Country" campaigns. A number of models who have portrayed the Marlboro Man have died of smoking-related diseases. Other early models were Robert Larking, the sales promotion director of Philip Morris and others from the Leo Burnett ad agency, Lee Stanley and Owen Smith. The first models were a Navy lieutenant and Andy Armstrong, the ad agency's art supervisor. It transformed a feminine campaign, with the slogan "Mild as May", into one that was masculine, in a matter of months. The campaign, created by Leo Burnett Worldwide, is said to be one of the most brilliant advertisement campaigns of all time. The ads were originally conceived as a way to popularize filtered cigarettes, which at the time were considered feminine. 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 Marlboro Man was first conceived by Leo Burnett in 1954. In the United States, where the campaign originated, it was used from 1954 to 1999.

The Marlboro Man is a figure that was used in tobacco advertising campaigns for Marlboro cigarettes. A Marlboro Man advertisement on a Warsaw building in 2000.
