From How the Cadillac Got Its Fins by Jack Mingo:

How the Marlboro Man Got a Sex Change

Did you know that the typical Marlboro smoker, now personified by the rugged cowboys who puff on cigarettes while roping steers, was once a woman? But it wasn't the cowboys who were transsexuals - it was the cigarettes.

Marlboro was born in 1924 as one of the first women's cigarettes. In previous decades, the idea of marketing cigarettes to women was about as taboo then as marketing them to eight year olds is today (ask cartoony Joe Camel about the sticky problems with that one). But with the Suffragettes and the "anything goes" 1920s, women decided that there was no reason they couldn't develop the same filthy habits as men had (the health issues, although known to researchers, were not yet part of public consciousness).

Still, it was a tricky sell. Advertisers had to somehow convince the women that stained teeth, foul breath, and addictive cravings, not to mention that dry, heaving morning cough, were somehow genteel and ladylike. Philip Morris decided that their brand needed to have a classy, sophisticated name. Winston Churchill was in the news at the time, and it was being reported that he was related to the Earl of Marlborough. Philip Morris marketers liked the sound of the Marlborough name, but didn't think it looked good on the pack. They lopped off the "ugh" and came up with Marlboro.

In the 1920s, the Marlboro campaign was based around how ladylike the new cigarette was. They painted a red band around the filter to hide those unattractive lipstick stains, calling them "Beauty Tips to Keep the Paper from Your Lips."

They called Marlboro the "Mild as May" cigarette for women and added a tone of snobbishness - "Discerning feminine taste is now confirming the judgment of masculine connoisseurs in

expressing unanimous preference for the Aristocrat of Cigarettes…" The brand developed a small following enough to keep it alive, but not enough to be called a great success.

Two decades later, Philip Morris decided to "reposition" the brand to fit a new market niche - men who were afraid of dying from lung cancer but too macho to admit it. Here's what happened. In the early 1950s, scientists published a major, well-publicized study linking smoking to lung cancer. This was the "smoking gun" that the cigarette companies had been dreading for years. In 1953, for the first time, cigarette consumption dipped in the United States.

The cigarette companies moved fast. Then, like now, they pursued a contradictory strategy: claiming that the studies were "inconclusive" on cigarette safety while simultaneously implying that their brands were somehow "safer" than those other, more dangerous, brands. The brands that were suffering most were their nonfilter brands. Filter cigarettes were perceived by smokers as safer, but up to that point filter cigarettes had been marketed to only women. Many men now wanted a filtered brand, figuring it was safer, but were afraid they'd be subjected to public ridicule if they switched to a woman's brand.

Cigarette manufacturers had long resisted pushing filter cigarettes to men, in part because they thought filters implied that smoke was unpleasant or dangerous. Now, though, they started seeing a silver lining in so doing. Filtered cigarettes were more profitable because the filter material was cheaper than a comparable amount of tobacco. Besides, filters screened out some of the smoke's harshness, which meant they could get by with a cheaper grade of tobacco.

Philip Morris decided to give Marlboro a sex change operation. The company hired Chicago advertising executive Leo Burnett to do the surgery.

Burnett's specialty was cute advertising characters like the Jolly Green Giant, the Keebler Elves, the lonely Maytag Repairman, Charlie the Tuna, Poppin' Fresh, and Morris the Cat. When he thought about defeminizing Marlboros, he decided to use a series of the most testosterone-laced images he could think of.

He intended to present a series of hunky, sweaty sea captains, weight lifters, adventurers, war correspondents, construction workers, Marines, and the like. The cowboy was his first image of the series. But Philip Morris wasn't sure about the campaign. It hired a research company that came back with the alarming report that there were only three thousand fulltime cowboys in the entire United States. How do you expect men working in a downtown office building to relate to an image like that? [Easy. Look here. – Wes]

Burnett had to do some fast talking, and he eventually convinced the company to try the cowboy. The campaign worked. In one year, Marlboro zoomed from a marginal presence, capturing less than 1 percent of the market, to the fourth bestselling brand. The company decided to forget the sea captains and soldiers and stick with cowboys.

Burnett's first set of cowboys were professional models, some of whom had never been on a horse before. That led to a series of embarrassing gaffes that left cowpokes-in-the-know snickering. For example, an early ad showed a cowboy's legs in close-up: His blue jeans were well-worn, his hand-tooled boots were scuffed in all the right places ... but his spurs were upside-down. After that, the agency started recruiting real cowboys from places like Texas and Montana for their ads.

In 1955, the agency added a trademark tattoo to their cowboy's hand. One model observed after a photo shoot that they had spent three minutes making up his face-and three hours painting the tattoo. In 1962, Burnett's agency bought the rights to The Magnificent Seven theme and added words to it for their TV ads ("Come to where the flavor is . . . Come to Marlboro Country").

Since then, the Marlboro Man has been among the most successful campaigns ever, keeping the cigarette at or near the top of the heap for years. When cigarette ads were banned in 1971, the cowboy made a smooth transition to print and billboards since he never said anything anyway. He continued squinting off into the distance with that self-absorbed expression that addicts have when contemplating their next fix.

Everyone seems to love the cowboy. The image seems to work as well at convincing women to smoke Marlboros as men. It also works well with blacks and Hispanics. That's ironic-even though many real cowboys have been black or Hispanic, all the Marlboro men have been Caucasian. Best of all for the company (which has to replace all those dying dying-breed customers), the cowboy has worked as a role model with kids and teens as well, making Marlboro the number-one starter brand.

The popularity of the cowboy image has led to antismoking parodies as well. In France, Philip Morris sued an antismoking group that used a cowboy model to deliver an antismoking message, claiming trademark infringement. Philip Morris won a pyrrhic victory-a judgment of 1 franc instead of the $3 million they had asked for - but at least they got the ads off the air.

The real cowboy models, meanwhile, have periodically embarrassed the company by dying like desperadoes from smoking-related diseases like lung cancer, emphysema, and strokes. There's some evidence that the Marlboro man may be deemphasized in future Marlboro promotions. In 1993, in what industry analysts suggested is an attempt to keep novice smokers coming, Philip Morris lowered the price of Marlboros for the first time and presented a non-cowboy promotion, the Marlboro Adventure Team, in which smokers accrue "Adventure Miles" for every pack smoked. These can be turned in for Marlboro-logo sports equipment (instead of infinitely more practical Marlboro-logo oxygen tanks, wheelchairs, and hospital beds).