Leo Burnett was the maestro of advertising symbols. He created visual archetypes that are still hanging around almost 70 years later.
Some were a particular target of the sexes. Take for instance the Jolly Green Giant. Burnett brings to life a pagan harvest god using catch the phases “the bounty of the good earth” to sell peas to the ’50s homemaker. And how about the cuddly little Doe boy with the cute little laugh when you poked his belly. Irresistible to the mom making dinner rolls, not to mention the young audience eating them. Burnett uses this icon to symbolize the “friendly bounce” of the Pillsbury home-baking products. Both very successful icons that worked their magic for many years.
Forging his reputation around the concept that “share of market” needed to be built on “share of mind” he plugged into the consumer’s basic needs. He maintained that these symbols were working on what he called “thought force” further stating- “we absorb it through our pores, without knowing we do so. By osmosis.”
Perhaps his biggest advertising success can be one that changed the consumer world for good or bad—depending on how you look at it.
The Marlboro Campaign that Shook the World
The male consumer in the 1950s viewed filter cigarettes as a very feminine thing. Burnett began to target male audiences creating a tough but introspective cowboy on horseback or as he put it-”the most masculine type of man,” using the newly branded product.
A little history on the product re-branding and why it sold it so well.
Oddly enough, Marlboro was first created in Victorian England, it was then brought over to the states as a cigarette for women. We all know smokers identify with their own brand. And it’s not necessarily the taste that sells the product. A great deal of a sale exists with the look (guilty of the same, I buy my wife’s wine based on the label look—don’t ask me about the taste per bottle to bottle).
The packaging for Marlboro hints of a regal blood line with its red roof chevron on the face of the package. The consumer needed an icon to identify with that look. Enter Chicago’s Leo Burnett.
Burnett re-gendered the icon calling the current Miss Marlboro a “sissy smoke . . . a tea room smoke.” With the creation of the Marlboro man, Burnett tapped into our American royalty, the manly cowboy.
When R.J. Reynolds tested Marlboro on focus groups, they found that it was not the rugged machismo that young smokers were turned on to, but could identify with his separation from societal restraints. His tattoo broke a new ground with the young James Dean (see Rebel Without a Cause) fans. Our cowboy’s sense of belonging to a place detached from society—Marlboro Country pushed this young American consumer closer to a purchase even further. Soon tee shirts with the rolled up sleeves holding a Marlboro box (they also changed the packaging) became the look of the rebel teen.
