THE MARLBORO STORY

[Music] listen while i tell you a story the tale of the marlboro brand it came out of richmond virginia one day and spread clear across the land this is the story of a cigarette called marlborough and how a sort of faceless sissified little brand became america's fastest growing cigarette with a personality as strong as america's frontier past this is the marlborough story it all started back in 1954 when marlboro came in a feminine package and men didn't take too well to filter cigarettes well the philip morris company had done some very thorough research into the fast-growing filter business and had come up with a revolutionary new cigarette package the first new one in over 40 years the now famous flip top box that's when leo burnett and his advertising agency came into the picture when the phil morris people decided to give us this account i really can't tell you what a charge we got out of it the first real assignment we got was for a newspaper ad as part of a test campaign that the previous agency had prepared which was then running in dallas and fort worth they told us that they didn't expect miracles overnight and to meet this particular assignment we could run one of the ads prepared by the previous agency and continue the campaign until we were ready to come down there with a full-fledged recommendation and uh i said the hell with that from so many words i said the first thing we take down to 100 park avenue and in our first demonstration of what we can do for a new virtually a new brand of cigarettes uh is not going to be somebody else's ad so we started to work out there at the farm uh about 9 30 saturday morning and here's where it went the cigarettes are [ __ ] some people think that filter circuits of any kind are kind of [ __ ] and we want to make a matchman i said what's the most masculine symbol you can think of and right off the top of his head one of these writers spoke up and said a cowboy that's for sure i said go over there and draw this cowboy roughly uh i have some layout pads and uh let's make a great big uh sketch of this cowboy out of this book here and he did that i said so far so good we got a masculine image and but now i've always felt that any product should have a source a recognized source that people respect well the name phil morris is very well known it's good name so uh so across the top of this ad with a combination with this photograph uh what are in there uh new from phil morris give people something to they recognized hang on to he did that okay we had about this much space left under the picture and uh i said now put the package in there um over here over in the left-hand corner uh not too small not too big and leave room for a caption flip top box is an awfully good name well one another one of these guys i piped up and said i i believe you might say uh delivers the goods on flavor well he sat down with the typewriter and buyed a cigarette and scratched his head for a minute and bagged off the coffee monday morning we set the type on the ad but we dug up a another picture of a cowboy and we slapped this together in a matter of less than 24 hours i would say well uh the art director brought it in showed it to me and i got i just jumped out of my chair i mean i i've been advertising business quite a while but this is one of the greatest things i've ever seen i i just every instinct i had told me that this was this was it you see uh and i was so enthusiastic we were much smaller in those days but i started running up and down the hall showing it to people who are so proud of it everybody uh it's here you know the client who reacted the way we hoped he would and they started running up and down the hall too well that's that's about it except for television of course [Music] you get a lot to like with a marvel filter flavor flip top box this man smokes marlboro cigarettes what kind of a man is he nothing i like better than flying up there i'm pilot and navigator all in one i go where i please good for a man to do once in a while you like to smoke too sure why marlborough you get a lot to like with a bar girl filter flavor flip top box this man smokes marlboro cigarettes what kind of a man is he i'm one of the hands on this branch i wouldn't trade places with anybody working outside suits me you like to smoke too a cigarette's good company so everything we did seemed to spell mother you know it all kind of came together and we made a few mistakes along the line but some areas and some commercials were better than others but that's the way it all started that's the way it all started with a big bang the new marlboro pack in advertising were an overnight success marlboros were in such demand that additional packaging equipment had to be air freighted from england sales went through the roof from 18 million cigarettes in 1954 to six and a half billion in 55 and over 14 billion by 1956 but we've kind of skipped over one important element in the success story music the art of the musical jingle has played a real significant part throughout marlborough's history what you're about to hear is the case history of a jingle you're going to be taken back to the very beginnings to the point where most jingles start to one person by himself with a pad of paper a pencil and in this case a piano [Music] at this point all the writer has to go on is one line of copy a line which will appear in print advertising and with luck will be the basis for his jingle his job is to work in the line and decide what else if anything should be written to set up the line in addition the melody must be memorable singable and simple after a lot of fall starts one melodic line emerges one of the requirements of a successful jingle is versatility can it be played other ways than just the original way [Music] you [Music] well it could go as a march quite obviously how about a sweet and smooth version julie london sings the marlborough song you get a lot to like with a marlboro you get a lot to like with a marlboro it's the first big powerful marlborough headline idea we showed men with rugged hobbies and interesting occupations men who looked successful and wore tattoos suggesting they had come up the hard way and had made it handing it some romantic past they were a breed apart and became known as the marlboro men and the marlborough image started to emerge with julie london's sultry voice lending spice to the campaign but how to keep it rolling how to keep it fresh in trying to stay a jump ahead of competition a new line emerged where there's a man there's a marlboro [Music] old-fashioned flavor in the new way to smoke make yours a filter make it more world that's how it all got started and by 1957 we sold close to 20 billion marlboroughs that means in each and every day of 1957 we sold three times as many cigarettes as we did in the whole year of fifty three three times as many every day but today marlborough is more than just america's fastest growing cigarette it's also the leading american brand overseas but it didn't happen overnight marlborough suffered some real growing pains in the past 15 years agonizing periods that i'm sure leo and his people would just as soon forget i know i would there was a time in the late fifties and early sixties when marlborough's sharp growth flattened out in those days just holding our own seemed quite an accomplishment because the whole character of the cigarette business was changing dramatically if you were around then you may recall the big impact the 1957 reader's digest article had this article on smoking and health did much to change the structure and composition of the whole industry while it accelerated the growth of filter cigarettes it also gave birth to a new kind of filter the hi-fi flavor filters like marlborough got pushed aside for a couple of years while high filtration brands of which kent was the leader reaped the big benefits though it had less than one percent of the market in 1956 kent sales boomed and in two years achieved an eight percent share while marlborough fought to stay even but we stayed with our original marlborough concept and strategy marlborough had been conceived and developed as a full flavor cigarette and we kept it that way today we are glad we did this year marlborough sold 50 percent more cigarettes than kent but in spite of high fives we stayed with the philosophy that has guided us over the years to conceive design and promote products that fill vacuums in the marketplace parliament benson and hedges hundreds and most recently virginia slims are good examples of this philosophy of course marlborough was our first a full flavor cigarette whose personality has grown richer through the years and has grown consistently from the full flavor base on which it was originally established at about this time another challenge presented itself to the marlborough brand the flip top box had contributed immeasurably to the early success of the brand now however the question still remained where was the limit for this packaging innovation in 1958 at the urging of joe coleman we introduced the marlborough soft pack as a companion to our flip top box today nearly half of marlborough sales come from our soft pack and of course we sell a lot more flip top boxes than we did then you may remember a couple of the fellows who helped us introduce this new package open the package juggernaut fans there's a new swing to marlborough these days and the reason is more and more smokers are buying marlboro and the new king-size soft pack why the box don't flip harry because the box don't flip no it does it does the soft pack don't it doesn't okay yo look marlboro is the same cigarette it just comes in two different packages you want to trade all right no no the fans in king size soft pack or flip top box marlboro gives you the flavor you want uh chocolate orange vanilla lemon lemon no not lemon fans marlboro is the filter cigarette with the unfiltered taste pistachio right wrong tell them about the exclusive selectrate filter all right marlborough uh get harry in the extensive select rate soft-sized king pack or flip top uh uh box that do it that did it [Music] the saddleback campaign represents the next refinement in marlborough advertising men were shown relaxing and enjoying their cigarette and julie london was there to help get them in the mood wouldn't a cigarette taste good right now wouldn't you like it marlborough get a world of flavor have one with me have a marlboro cigarette [Music] filter flavor [Music] athletes were also featured in later settleback ads and in the marlborough empty stadium commercials charlie connerly john arnett tom harmon don hudson frankie albert and paul horny the packers against the chicago bears remember [Applause] this was the run that shattered the record 176 points scored in a single [Music] season guess you felt pretty good about that score paul sure did i feel pretty good about this cigarette too how's that marlboro song go you get a lot to like filter flavor pack or box marlboro marlboro advertising from its inception in 1954 has consistently developed and grown from our original concept the refinements along the way set precedence not just in the cigarette business but in advertising in general few campaigns have been as single-minded in purpose and as unique and fresh in execution we were the first to use real men in our advertising instead of professional model types this changed the whole advertising business not just cigarette advertising the non-model model became fashionable in the early years marlborough masculinity was expressed through the use of a lot of different types then in the later settleback ads we seem to be after a simpler expression of this idea a single symbol of masculinity we used athletes as models lean hard types who were the personification of the marlboro idea but the one recurring symbol the one type who projected the sharpest image of the marlboro man was the american cowboy in a world that was becoming increasingly complex and frustrating for ordinary man the cowboy represented an antithesis a man whose environment was simplistic and relatively pressure free he was his own man in a world he owned and he seemed to be an ideal symbol for our cigarette the crystallization of seven years of theme development and we showed him standing in dramatic low angle photos against cityscapes inviting smokers to join him in marlborough country marlborough country that was the label the headline idea that seemed to hold it all together the masculine cowboy smoking his cigarette in his private world marlborough country and originally we showed him in new york in yankee stadium we wanted to tell the world that we were leaders that wherever people smoked for flavor that was marlborough country [Music] this is marlboro country the canyons of new york or colorado from the golden gate to the great divide in all 50 states the big switch is tomorrow [Music] marlborough's richer flavor comes from the rare breed of tobaccos in its richmond virginia recipe the exclusive selectrate filter smooths but doesn't tame the taste you get a lot to like with a wild bird filter flavor box settle back in marlboro country in these commercials you see a sharpening of our image with more focus on the cowboys real environment and this was the next refinement in our advertising to put the cowboy in his world today's west and when we did he became a more believable symbol of masculinity the rugged dramatic beauty of his world allowed him to also become a more visual symbol and in visual terms he was at his strongest words were extraneous in fact they might have had a negative effect so our copy got shorter and the image of marlboro better defined and more fully developed and today the marlboro cowboy is a part of the american scene and some people the inevitable imitators who tried to capitalize on our success seem to think it's public domain there's national country and marlow country and ford country and cartoons there's campbell suits this man rides hard for a living and he's working up a runaway appetite come sundown he is one hungry man how do you handle a hungry man and kids candies this is cadbury country fairy's bar six for you your buddies even your best girl and the marlboro coat or marley coat as it's called has become standard apparel in fact a whole new trend toward western menswear has been attributed to the impact of marlboro advertising but of course imitation is just one indicator of a successful advertising campaign the important one is sales the changes of the late 50s flattened our growth then as the effect of the tar derby waned as our advertising became more dramatically focused and our image more powerful we experienced a new period of growth a period that saw us double our sales from about 22 billion cigarettes in 1960 to close to 44 billion by the end of 69 and marlborough moved from the 10th ranking cigarette to an aggressive and growing number three and we figure about a year away from second place marlborough's growth as well as the dramatic growth of benson and hedges 100s the introduction of virginia slims and parliament's continuing contribution has resulted in the philip morris corporation becoming a major force in the cigarette business moving from last place among the major cigarette companies in 1962 to a virtual tie for third this year with our share of industry growing from nine percent to more than fifteen percent this then is the marlborough story a story of how a specialty cigarette developed an image so powerful it became a part of the american language a masculine image so well defined that today the cowboy is synonymous with marlborough and marlborough country has become a part of the american idiom and when you add music to the cowboy image there's no doubt about it you're in marlboro country marlborough's dramatic theme music has played a big part in the marlboro story originally from the movie the magnificent seven people now identify it as the music from marlboro country [Music] [Applause] [Applause] [Music] so [Music] then so as long as men smoke for flavor there'll always be a marlboro country so you