The brand that is literally the crown jewel of the Altria empire is Marlboro. Being the premiere tobacco giant in the United States since the end of World War II, Marlboro has gone through an evolution in branding. Originally because of the domination of Chesterfield, Camel, and Lucky Strike with returning World War I soldiers Marlboro's were originally billed as a lady's cigarette. After Readers Digest introduced the world to the health risks of smoking and filter cigarettes became the norm Marlboro was able to use strategic marketing to corner the business. The creation of two very successful brand imaging campaigns pushed Marlboro over the top in the early fifties as the number one American cigarette. Marlboro Country was the original campaign which used images of the wild west to create an Americana themed campaign. A continuation of this effort lead to the creation of the Marlboro man whose 1967 image is shown above. The Marlboro man was the embodiment of the rugged, male American usually smoking while doing ranch work or riding horseback. Both of these campaigns were enormously successful. As time went on restrictions on cigarette advertisement became increasingly severe. No more could the tobacco giant use TV, radio, or print to advertise its products. Now for Philip Morris, Altria, and Marlboro the name of the game is brand loyalty. The current Marlboro website consists of two links one taking you to Philip Morris USA's website and one takes you to a "Smokers Sign Up" which is an email list where smokers can recieve coupons and benefits. Philip Morris USA's website is quite modest. The imagery is of tobacco plants as opposed to cigarettes and the language is also quite guarded. Almost right of the bat they acknowlege there customer base is shrinking. The first paragraph under the heading "marketing our cigarettes" ends with this sentence, "While we want to
grow our market share within the cigarette industry, we do not want adults to start smoking nor do we want kids to start smoking." So thats a sizable prediciment to grow your income while looking to gain zero new customers. The approach now is all about beating the competetion in loyalty and in public opinion. We see ads encouraging quitting smoking or against underage use and many of them are in fact sponsored by Philip Morris. This ads dissuade use but somehow bulster public opinion. Also you dont see R.J. Reynolds doing the same kind of ads so they're clearly trying to maintain an advantage in exposure despite the advertising ban. Its a backwards world for cigarette branding and sometimes you have to lose multiple battles in order to keep winning the war. But it won't be long before fast food giants, soft drink empires, and struggling auto makers will be in similar boats. There is a lot to be learned about brand enhancement by the way Marlboro and Altria have maintained success. Everything that could have possibly gone wrong for this company has and they still dominate their industry, granted the industry shares its problems because of the product they produce. Although in my opinion in the long run they know they probably won't exist in 100 years they know smoking is on its way out they just want the ride to go as long as possible.
