Marlboro is the most world-wide known cigarette brand made by
Altria Group, Inc. previously named
Philip Morris Companies Inc... Philip Morris Companies Inc. changed its name to Altria Group, Inc. on January 27, 2003. Originally Marlboro was exposed in 1847 at the London market but soon repositioned in the US. The greatest tobacco products' brand is named after Great Marlborough Street where its original London factory was situated.
When the Cigarette brand first emerged on the market in 1920, they were marketed to women. The ads featured women and held the slogan "Mild as May." One of the traits of Marlboro cigarettes at that period was a red tip, which concealed women's lipstick marks. This approach was successful until World War II (1939-45), when slow sales caused Marlboro packs to be withdrawn from the market. The cigarettes were revived in the 1950s, as the first medical research linking cigarette smoking with cancer began to reach the public. It was thought that Marlboro cigarettes, with their filter, might offer smokers the illusion of a reduced health risk. However, the filter was regarded as effeminate by many men, who made up the bulk of the market.
In 1954, the Leo Burnett Company, a Chicago advertising agency, was given the task of making Marlboro cigarettes appealing to men. The result was the "tattooed man" campaign. It involved a series of print ads showing a man with a tattoo on his hand holding a Marlboro. The man would be one of several "manly" types, such as a policeman, a firefighter, a construction worker or a cowboy. The agency studied consumer response, and the cowboy figure proved to be the most popular. By 1957, the cowboy had replaced all of the others.
In 1960 Philip Morris and Thomas Hutzler invented "Marlboro Country" with American Western landscapes and a rugged cowboy. The Marlboro Man has displayed the distinctive red Marlboro cigarette pack for almost fifty years - on billboards, in store window displays, and on the pages of magazines and newspapers. The Marlboro Man could also be seen on television, usually accompanied by the rousing musical theme from the Western film "The Magnificent Seven", until the government ban on cigarette commercials in 1972. The Marlboro Man in the "Marlboro Country" series of advertisements was instrumental in establishing Philip Morris' Marlboro brand as the world's best-selling cigarette. There were dozens of men, many of whom were real cowboys who modeled for the Marlboro advertising campaign and two of those men, both long-time smokers have died of cancers which began in their lungs. Wayne McLaren, a former professional rodeo rider, who appeared in small parts in various television series and movies (primarily Westerns) throughout the 1960s and 1970s and posed for some promotional photographs on behalf of Marlboro in 1976 , succumbed to lung cancer in July 1992. David McLean, who appeared in many Marlboro television and print advertisements starting in the early 1960s, also died of cancer in October 1995. McLean starred in the short-lived 1960 television Western Tate, and he played roles in numerous television series and feature films during the 1960s and 1970s.
Marlboro Cigarettes are often called in slang as "cowboy killers" through the strength of the red variety of Marlboro cigarettes and owing to Marlboro Man. In August 2006 a US District Court prohibited to use the terms like "low tar", "light", "mild" or "natural" and it is expected to use standard "color" names instead: Marlboro Red, Marlboro Gold(Light), and Marlboro Silver(Ultra Light), which are already in use in the European Union since 2005.
