Marlboro was launched as a women's cigarette — and failed until the cowboy arrived

Philip Morris introduced Marlboro in 1924 as a luxury women's cigarette sold mainly in hotels and resorts. The slogan was 'Mild as May,' and the filter had a printed red band that the company called 'Beauty Tips to Keep the Paper from Your Lips' — designed to hide lipstick stains. The packaging was feminine, and the advertising featured women exclusively.

The women's positioning failed. By the early 1950s, filtered cigarettes were widely considered a women's product, and men refused to be seen with them. Marlboro's market share had fallen to less than 1% of US tobacco sales. The brand was briefly withdrawn from the market. Philip Morris faced an existential problem: the first major scientific studies linking smoking to lung cancer were driving demand for filtered cigarettes, but men would not buy filters.

In 1954, Philip Morris approached the Leo Burnett advertising agency. Burnett created a campaign featuring rugged masculine figures — sea captains, weightlifters, war correspondents, construction workers, and cowboys. The first figure to appear was the cowboy, inspired by a 1949 Life magazine photograph of Texas rancher Clarence Hailey Long Jr. The packaging was redesigned by Frank Gianninoto into the iconic red-and-white box, with the red top intended to make the pack stand out on a shelf.

The campaign was a breakthrough. The same cigarette, with the same tobacco blend and the same filter, had been a failure when marketed to women. Repositioned as a masculine brand, it surged. By 1955, after the national rollout of the cowboy ads, Marlboro sales jumped from approximately 18 million cigarettes to 6 billion. By 1972, Marlboro was the best-selling cigarette brand in the world.