Leo Burnett was an advertising pioneer of the mid-20th Century. His Chicago-based company, which bore his name, created such famous icons as the Pillsbury Doughboy, the Maytag Repairman, and Tony the Tiger.
The Marlboro Man, another Burnett creation, premiered in 1954.
Marlboro Cigarettes debuted in 1924 and were initially advertised as a luxury brand. Women became their primary customers, so the ads were geared toward them. Filtered cigarettes like Marlboros were considered effeminate.
Marlboro wanted to make their product seem more masculine. Enter Leo Burnett. He and his ad firm began promoting the products by showing all sorts of male models smoking them - hunters, lawyers, pilots, business executives, men in tuxedos, and of course cowboys.
But by the mid-50s, the cowboy image stuck.
The first model used in the ongoing Marlboro Man campaign was an actual Colorado rancher named Bob Norris. He was chosen for the ads not just because of his rugged appearance but because of his friendship with actor John Wayne.
When first approached to appear in the advertisements and commercials, Norris was ambivalent. He had work to do on his ranch.
Eventually, though, his image, which was photographed thousands of times, was used in countless print ads for 14 years.
Ironically, Bob Norris was not a smoker. He never touched cigarettes except when in front of the camera.
1964: The US Surgeon General first warned about the link between cigarette smoking and lung cancer.
Norris’s children needled their father about it. If you don’t want us to smoke, his kids said, then why are you promoting cigarettes?
Norris saw the hypocrisy, realized he was setting a poor precedent, and walked away from the lucrative modeling job for good in 1968.
After that, a series of men took over the mantle as the Marlboro Man.
Darrell Winfield, a Wyoming rancher, took over after Norris. Others included Eric Lawson from San Luis Obispo, CA; David Millar of Meriden, N.H.; David McLean of California; and Wayne McLaren of Lake Charles, LA.
McLean’s widow filed a lawsuit against the William Morris Tobacco Company because her husband had to smoke so much during shoots that it caused his fatal cancer.
Wayne McLaren would eventually rail against cigarette smoking when he developed lung cancer. The Los Angeles Times quoted McLaren’s mother of saying that among his last words were, “Tobacco will kill you, and I am living proof of it.”
Eric Lawson appeared in an ad as a Marlboro Man-style cowboy who denounced smoking.
At least 5 of the Marlboro Men died of lung cancer. So did John Wayne.
Bob Norris outlived all of them. He died in 2019 at age 90.
Leo Burnett’s advertising firm still exists, but the longtime smoker died in 1971.
After multiple US states sued the major tobacco companies, the Marlboro Man campaign ended in 1999, never to be used again.
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