Women in Marlboro Advertisements
By Laura Caplan

In Marlboro’s history, the appearance of women in the cigarette ads is rare.  When the Cigarette brand first emerged on the market in 1924, the ads featured women and held the slogan “Mild as May.”  These ads were short loved and years later were replaced by the Marlboro Man in order to transform Marlboro’s image.  In 1957 a Reader’s Digest article published the effects of smoking and health.  Due to the population becoming more health conscious, Marlboro cigarette sales decreased from 1957-1958.  This is the only year in Marlboro’s history that sales were down from the previous year.  Attempting to boost sales, Marlboro advertising executives decided to use images of females in their advertisements.  Ad execs like John Benson raised the question that “if women are filter smokers have we gone too far in making this a make appeal brand?”  Julie London, a popular singer at the time, sang the new Marlboro song, which included the slogan, "You get a lot to like with a Marlboro.”  The Julie London commercials were interrupters to the normal ad schedule.  These ads were short lived and ads for Marlboro returned to featuring the Marlboro man.  Ad execs thought that there was no need to produce special ads that appealed to women because Marlboro had more women smokers than other cigarette brands.