The Marlboro Man: Exclusive Lifestyle Marketing Tale

Introduction

One of the most iconic marketing strategies ever witnessed by mankind is also known as “Lifestyle marketing”. When the ban was announced all the companies tried their best to keep their reputation. Some brands tried to justify cigarettes while some brands completely disapproved of the very research itself.

 

The Marlboro Man

On the 11th of Jan 1964, it was officially declared by the United States government that cigarette causes cancer and within a day an $8bn tobacco industry and the incomes of 7,50,000 families were at stake while most companies saw their sales dropping down there was one company that miraculously went from having just 1% market share to becoming the fourth-largest cigarette brand in the world in less than one year. After the 1970s, when cigarette ads were permanently banned from television, this brand became even more popular to became the world’s largest manufacturer of cigarettes. This brand I am talking about goes by the name Marlboro.

So what the marketers of Marlboro did is that instead of justifying smoking and using statistics that were difficult to understand they came out with a campaign called “The Marlboro Man” wherein they introduced the character who was supposedly everything a man wanted to be like and they named this character the Marlboro man.

Marlboro man was a cowboy with a perfectly built-up body and the commercial showcased him as the ultimate archetype of manhood. He was tough affectionate and stylish and stood as the icon of freedom and manliness. Men in the 1960s were so fascinated by the Marlboro man and started buying Marlboro cigarettes, and it was the major game-changer for the company. And the fun fact is in all of those commercials, the cigarette was not even the primary focus. Cigarettes as a product have less than 10 seconds of footage time.

Apart from the business lesson, there is one important life lesson: brands are bombarding all consumers with lifestyle commercials that do not appear as ads but in the form of pop culture icons. They are merely tapping into your insecurities to convince you to do something that will give you a feeling as if you are an elevated version of yourself. But the truth is because of your lack of self-awareness you don’t realize that your insecurities are putting money into their pockets eventually to make those companies billions of dollars.

 

 

 

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