I can see it like it
was yesterday: Rugged cowboys in dusters on horseback in a
downpour, punching cattle panicked into a stampede by lightning.
The theme from the movie “The Magnificent Seven” blared from the
background.
Finally, the herd calmed, and we saw the
cowboys sitting around the campfire smoking cigarettes as the sun
set. They were Marlboro Men.
Cigarette advertising has
been banned from television since 1971, but the image of the
Marlboro Man endures. It has woven its way into the fabric of the
myth of the American West.
The Marlboro Man ad campaign,
started in the 1960s, was one of the most successful in history.
Before Philip Morris bought the concept from the Leo Burnett
Advertising Agency, Marlboro was a slumping cigarette brand
targeted to women.
In the world created by Madison
Avenue, the West became “Marlboro Country,” inhabited by
grizzled-yet-clean-cut men who, of course, smoked Marlboros. I was
one goat-roping farm boy who wanted to live in “Marlboro Country.”
I knew what I had to do even if I also knew it was all a facade.
I smoked Marlboros for years, starting in high school. I
quit cigarettes Jan. 20, 1981, the day Ronald Reagan rode into the
White House and made America ride tall in the saddle again. It was
also the day my father — a regular smoker — had his first of two
heart bypass operations. He later died of heart failure. Mom died
of emphysema earlier this year, 23 hours after she smoked her last
cigarette.
The luster has worn off cigarettes in the last
40 years. No one, including a reluctant tobacco industry, disputes
the fact that cigarettes kill hundreds of thousands of Americans
and perhaps millions of people worldwide every year.
Smokers have been relegated to closed airport lounges, a few
remaining bars and forced to light up in the cold outside of office
buildings. Two of the original Marlboro men made very public pleas
against smoking before succumbing to lung cancer.
Wayne
McClaren, 51, died in 1992. David McLean, 73, died in 1995. Lung
cancer also killed Yul Brynner and Steve McQueen, the heroes of
“The Magnificent Seven” on which the theme evoked the memory of the
rugged individualists fighting for right. A lot of Americans may
have quit smoking, but the powerful images of the Marlboro Man and
Marlboro Country remain in the minds of generations of Americans.
Now, the West is changing and so is America.
In the
1990s, Marlboro Country went through a metamorphosis to appeal to a
new generation of Marlboro Men. The West, according to advertising
copy marketing this new image, is a “land that knows no limits.”
Marlboro Country became “Marlboro Unlimited.” Ads promoted “Gear
without Limits” for people who wanted to go to the Land That Knows
No Limits. It was Madison Avenue at its best, the mythic West at
its worst.
Most of us who live in the West recognize it
is anything but the Land That Knows No Limits. There are plenty of
limits: Water, leadership, patience and vision, to name a few.
Because of the growing limits on advertising and
marketing cigarettes,Marlboro now only offers its Marlboro Miles
catalog to smokers who can prove they are older than 21. I get it
mailed to my house because my son got it when he lived here. This
year Philip Morris introduced into a smokeless tobacco alternative,
Marlboro Snus. It also plans on adding more Marlboro-branded
products, including Marlboro Smooth cigarettes and Marlboro
Virginia Blend cigarettes, using only Virginia-grown bright
tobacco. This is an industry that just won’t die.
But while the Marlboro brand is still strong, its connection to the
West is slowly burning away. My 22-year-old daughter’s generation
doesn’t think about smoking when the theme of the Magnificent Seven
plays.
The Marlboro Man is not dead yet. But he’s
coughing.
Rocky Barker is a contributor to
Writers on the Range, a service of High Country News in Paonia,
Colorado. He is environmental writer for the Idaho Statesman and
author of the book “Scorched Earth: How the Fires of
Yellowstone Changed America.”
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