For a moment put Marlboro, Winston or any top selling cigarettes in the back burner and think why is any photo copying machine in the world known and called as Xerox as if Xerox is the machine’s generic name? Fine, why only Marlboro does always strike to both smokers and non smokers at the mention of cigarettes? Simple, and there can be only one answer to this set of questions. Marlboro is the best selling cigarette of this world and it is so ever since. If you aren’t in agreement with me, spare a moment and search for the simple keyword ‘cheap cigarettes’ in ‘video.google.com’ for instance and I am sure you will see images of cheap Marlboro cigarettes prominently displayed. I would like to think that this is a kind of unsolicited acknowledgement for the brand, perhaps unintentional also, by a world renowned open knowledge source project.

Now for the million dollar question, why is Marlboro cigarette the most popular brand in the world? We need to get into to some historical mood and from there move on to a modern, live wire marketer’s shoes in order to understand this.

Tobacco has always enthralled humans and prehistoric human remains vindicate this fact by exhibiting traces of nicotine. Obviously the tobacco of that era can be assumed to be raw and harder than any cigarette today inclusive of cheap cigarettes. What perhaps started as chance ingestion or a part of some sacred activity has given in to sort of smoking by 15th century when Columbus rediscovered tobacco in 1492. Tobacco ruled, in patches, as ‘country money’ for sometime before taking the form of cigarettes.

Marlboro cigarettes were aptly projected and billed as women’s cigarettes around 1924 but had to make over its image in totality after the debacle during the World War II. When they are reintroduced, Marlboro was a complete new package and came riding on the new found and much romanticized popularity of the cowboy.

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.

If this is a brief account of Marlboro’s success story, modern marketing blitzkrieg, exchangeable Marlboro miles or motorsport sponsorship etc, is efficiently sustaining the position for the brand. Cheap Marlboro is another avenue open to glide over for the brand.