Marlboro Man
The Marlboro Man is a figure used in tobacco advertising campaigns for Marlboro cigarettes. In the United States, where the campaign originated, it was used from 1954 to 1999. The Marlboro Man was first conceived by Leo Burnett in 1954. The images initially featured rugged men portrayed in a variety of roles but later primarily featured a rugged cowboy or cowboys, in picturesque wild terrain. The advertisements were originally conceived as a way to popularize filtered cigarettes, which at the time were considered feminine.
Joseph Cullman
During his tenure as CEO, the Philip Morris brand Marlboro became the most popular brand of cigarette in the United States. Described as "the cigarette industry’s chief defender against the antitobacco movement", he oversaw the creation of the successful Marlboro Man campaign from the 1950s onwards which has since become known as an icon of American TV advertising. In a now notorious 1971 television interview on the American current affairs program "Face the Nation", in response to a recently published study on the large numbers of undersized babies born to pregnant female smokers he declared "I concluded from that report that it's true that babies born from women who smoke are smaller, but they are just as healthy as the babies born to women who do not smoke. Some women would prefer having smaller babies."