Marlboro is the best selling cigarette of this world and it is so ever since. If you aren’t in agreement , spare a moment and search for the simple keyword ‘cheap cigarettes’ in google.com search for instance and I am sure you will find cheap Marlboro cigarettes sites prominently displayed, about 259,000 relative sites.

Marlboro is a brand of cigarette made by Altria. It is famous for its flavor, billboard advertisements and magazine ads of the Marlboro Man. In 2001 it was the most popular cigarette brand in the U.S.

Philip Morris, a London-based cigarette manufacturer, created a New York subsidiary in 1902 to sell several of its cigarette brands, including Marlboro. By 1924 they were advertising Marlboro as a woman’s cigarette based on the slogan “Mild As May”.

The brand was sold in this capacity until World War II when the brand faltered and was temporarily removed from the market. At the end of the war, three brands emerged that would establish a firm hold on the cigarette market: Camel, Lucky Strike, and Chesterfield. These brands were supplied to US soldiers during the war, creating an instant market upon their return. But Marlboro, when reintroduced with marketing that tapped into the new popularity of the romanticized cowboy in the 1950s, was able to increase sales by 5000%, returning as a formidable market force.

During the same era Reader’s Digest magazine published a series of articles that linked smoking with lung cancer. Philip Morris and the other cigarette companies took notice and each began to market filtered cigarettes. The new Marlboro with a filtered tip was launched in 1955.

The brand is named after Great Marlborough Street, the location of its original London factory. Richmond, Virginia, is now the location of the largest Marlboro cigarette manufacturing plant.

It is also pertinent to know why a cowboy is a hero, especially, in America and the rest of the Americanized world. Cowboy is the first hero and the much romanticized symbol of Americanism. They are always perceived and looked down upon as the pioneers of enterprising nature and fearlessness which are major reasons for what America is today. They are the ultimate men made from tougher material. Think tanks at Philip Morris had the challenge of carefully grooming this symbolic nationalism further and weave their cigarettes into it.

Switch over to Marlboro advertisements and TV commercials now. They focus on more on the virility, masculinity, the brevity with which they capture horses, glorification of their friendship etc with one hidden message that everyone should emulate them. Cowboys are strong guys and you will want to make a connection between this and hardness of the cigarettes.

And then there is this worldwide magic created by Hollywood, which, during the formative years of Marlboro from being cheap, has produced some of the history’s biggest block busters like ‘Magnificent Seven’, ‘Mc Cana’s Gold’ have immortalized the cowboy. Smoking was instantaneously equated with heroics which is evident from the 5000% jump in sales figures.