On the historic date of 11th Jan, 1964 it was officially declared by US government that cigarettes cause cancer and within a day 8 Billion dollar tobacco industry and income of 750 thousands families was at stake. Most of the companies saw their sales falling down but there was one company that miraculously went from having just 10% market share to become the fourth largest cigarette brand in the world in less than one year.
Even after 1970s when cigarettes ads were permanently banned from television this brand became even more popular to go on to become the largest manufacturer of cigarettes in the world.
Marlboro Cigarette
This brand that we are talking about goes by the name Marlboro and today it is so huge that it has got more consumers than its next ten competitors combined.
So the question is what the hell did they do because of which the very same cancer report and the ban which was essentially supposed to kill the business ended up becoming a stepping stone for Marlboro to become a 58 Billion dollar brand. The answer to this question lies in one of the most iconic marketing strategy ever witnessed by the mankind which is known as Lifestyle Marketing.
Now, let’s try to understand this using a very simple example that Nike signed up Michael Jordan for “Air Jordan Shoes”, they became so popular that even today after 18 years of Michael Jordan retirement he still makes 100M $ every single year from royalty.
100M$ per year from royalty
Some similar thing happened in India where suddenly MRF cricket bats became popular. Most of the 90’s kids have seen Sachin Tendulkar play cricket with MRF bat. The kids knew nothing about bats whether they are made of english willow or kashmir willow, they just wanted a bat with MRF sticker on it. It took them years to realise that MRF is actually a rubber tyre manufacturer and the full form of MRF is actually “Madras Rubber Factory “. Here’s where the majic of lifestyle marketing comes into play. The kids idealised Michael Jordan or Sachin Tendulkar and they all wanted to be like them. So subconsciously the Air Jordan shoes or MRF bats made them fell like their ideals.
This is what we call as lifestyle marketing, where consumers buy more into the lifestyle of the icon who is associated with the product than the product itself and this is exactly what the marketers of Marlboro Cigarettes did to their brand. After the 1964 report which was released by the Surgeon General of the United States, brands started to do everything in their capacity to keep their reputation. Some brands tried to justify cigarettes while some completely disapproved the very research itself.
Back then Marlboro was a very small company that made cigarettes only for women
but as soon as the news broke out the parent company of Marlboro, Philip Morris decided to shift their method of marketing and became an epitome to the biggest propaganda in the 20th century. The marketers of Marlboro instead of justifying smoke and using statistics that were difficult to understand they came out with the campaign called “The Marlboro Man”, in which they introduced a character who was supposedly everything that a man ever wanted to be like. He was a cowboy, who had a perfectly built up body and the commercials showcased him as the ultimate archetype of manhood.
He was tuff, affectionate, stylish and overall stood as the icon of manliness. Men of the 1960s were so fascinated by the Marlboro Man that they started buying there cigarettes. The commercial became the massive game changer for the company and within a year Marlboro went on having less than 1% market share to becoming the 4th largest cigarette manufacturer in the world and the fun fact is that in all those commercials cigarettes were not even in the primary subjects of focus, in fact cigarette as a product got less than 10 seconds of footage time in all those commercials and because of this even when the cigarette commercials were permanently banned from television, Marlboro was able to navigate through the situation because their focus was not on the cigarettes but on the Marlboro Man himself and that is how they were able to communicate their message very easily even though print and newspapers.
The sales skyrocketed because rest of the brands were struggling even to show their product and that is how Marlboro became a legend in advertising and laid the foundation for Marlboro to become a 58 Billion dollar brand.
Now more than a business lesson there is a very important life lesson that we need to learn from this iconic strategy. People just like in 1960s are failing to understand that we are constantly being bombarded with the lifestyle commercials that do not appear ads but in the form of pop culture icons. Now this includes James Bond appearing smoking a cigar or drinking wine and symbolising gentle manliness or some other famous person doing other stuffs in an advertisement. Now regardless of how appealing they look it is important for us to understand that they are merely tapping on to our insecurities to convince us to do something which will give us a feeling as if we are an elevated version of ourselves but the truth is because of our lack of self awareness we don’t realise that our insecurities are putting money into their pockets, eventually to make those companies billions of dollars but to turn ourselves into a sick miserable addict of either cigarettes or social validation depending on what we are buying into.
So always keep your eyes wide open and don’t fall into these traps and last and importantly our advice to you is that always remember that buying dumb things will never make you feel happier or make you a better version of yourself. The only thing that will make you feel better is your acceptance of your insecurities and imperfections and if at the end of the day you don’t embrace your insecurities, some billion dollar brand will dig into your misery and will make a fortune out of it.
So, think about it and if you think that we make sense then do share this blog with as many people as possible.
Imperfection is beauty, madness is genius and it’s better to be absolutely ridiculous than absolutely boring. — Marilyn Monroe
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One reply on “Lifestyle Marketing By Marlboro Cigarette”
Great article keep it up
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