The Marlboro Man
A Homoerotic American Hero
It’s hard to believe today, but Marlboro was initially marketed as a cigarette for women. The brand had targeted a high-class female audience beginning in 1924 with its “Mild as May” campaign. To strengthen its ability to compete with major brands like Lucky Strike, Camel, and Chesterfields in the 1950s, Philip Morris, with the help of the Leo Burnette advertising agency, set out to create a campaign targeted to men.
Marlboro’s “Tattooed Man” campaign, launched in 1955, reintroduced the Marlboro brand to the manliest of dudes across the nation. Advertising depicted the new Marlboro smoker as a lean, relaxed outdoorsman whose tattooed wrist suggested a romantic past, a man who had once worked with his hands. The ads focused on a close-up shot of a weathered, handsome face whose strong, veiny hand held aloft a Marlboro cigarette. Described as “virility without vulgarity, quality without the snobbery,” Marlboro’s new campaign summoned a diverse pool of working men as applicants for a new Marlboro representative, from which the cowboy quickly emerged as the most popular character.
With his wide-brimmed cowboy hat, boots and spurs, unbuttoned shirt, tight jeans, and a bit of coarse facial scruff, the Marlboro Man spoke directly to the masculine ideals of American society in the 1950s and 1960s. Just as Westerns dominated television thanks to popular shows like Gunsmoke and Maverick, and American kids were playing Cowboys and Indians, so did the Marlboro Man become more than a fixture in American culture. He became an American hero who stuck a chord across gender lines. After all, the campaign wasn’t just about being a man — it was about being an American.
