The message beckoned over airwaves and from newspaper pages: "Come to where the flavor is." Those featuring the cowboy - "an almost universal symbol of admired masculinity," as Leo Burnett wrote to Philip Morris's advertising director in a letter outlining the campaign - drew the strongest response.īy the early 1960s, just before the Surgeon General's advisory committee issued its verdict on the health risks of smoking, the theme had evolved into the mythical "Marlboro Country," where cowboys in white hats rode horseback between golden grass and blue skies, or sat around a campfire with an open red-topped pack posed next to the crackling flames. Sales increased 3,241 percent in 1955, the year the new ads rolled out. Philip Morris turned to the Chicago-based Leo Burnett agency, whose advertisers dropped Marlboro's price point and long-time "Mild as May" slogan, and staged a new campaign featuring icons of male autonomy: sun-cured men repairing cars, cleaning guns, cupping a flame in tattooed hands, or squinting into the distance over whirls of smoke.
Early market research suggested that the public viewed filters as effective but effeminate, and Marlboro, which for decades had been sold as a premium ladies' cigarette, needed a way to stand out from a new set of competitors. The marketing concept goes back to the 1950s, when Philip Morris added filter tips to the product line in response to the first studies linking smoking and lung cancer. Though most of Marlboro's domestic tobacco is grown in the silt of Appalachia, the brand has long carried a flavor of the American West. In February, the couple boarded a flight to southern Montana, wearing baseball caps emblazoned with the logo of the Crazy Mountain Ranch.They would join roughly a hundred other guests from across the country, some of the thousands who arrive each year for a luxury stay in the heart of the Rockies, courtesy of Philip Morris USA. Then came a box holding two red-and-black wheeled duffel bags. Several weeks later, they received a package with their finalized itineraries, round-trip plane tickets, a check for the associated taxes, and a pair of MasterCard gift cards to cover the cost of checking luggage. Rachel called her boyfriend to share the news, and later that night, the two went out to dinner and completed the stack of forms. "I just started screaming and freaking out and, like, jumping up and down," she told me. All she had to do was fill out the enclosed paperwork and submit to a background check, and she and one guest of her choice would be heading off on a four-day, all-expense-paid ranch vacation. "Congratulations!" it read: she was a winner in Marlboro's "Rock the Ranch" sweepstakes. Ripping open the cardboard flap of the thick Fed-Ex express envelope, she pulled out a letter.
The invitation reached Rachel Munyon as she returned home to her California apartment one evening in December 2011.
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