The real-life Marlboro Man didn't smoke. Bob Norris was Marlboro's first model, the inspiration for their logo, and the most impactful identity-marketing campaign in Tobacco history. He lived a full, healthy life and died in 2019 at age 90.

The fact that he didn't actually use the product himself did nothing to take away from his efficacy as a marketing icon. In its early days, Marlboro was primarily seen as woman's cigarette. Bob Norris forever changed that. He embodied the rugged, American Cowboy image that Philip Morris wanted to sell to its male customers.

In short, he embodied their identity-based approach to marketing.

Today, the Marlboro Man imagery continues to lure a largely male consumer base, and advertisements targeting a specific identity is a common strategy across industries. Jif Peanut Butter targets mothers by declaring "choosy Moms choose Jif", while Budweiser focuses on American patriotism, deeming themselves "America's beer". There are countless examples. Such approaches make sense, as research has shown that consumers respond positively to brands and products which are perceived to share a common identity.

However, approaches like this haven't always been common, and they haven't always been effective. This is especially the case when the identity is racial.

The Status Quo For Targeted Advertisements

Consider this slogan from Shafer Beer (which later became PBR) which occurred in the 1960s: "1856. It was a very good year for beer drinkers."

The ad was harkening back to the year of its founding. Maybe it was indeed a great year in America for beer. But only for some. It doesn't take long to realize why nostalgizing about America's antebellum days isn't the perfect identity strategy for the African-American market.

And yet, such approaches were common. In fact, they even appeared in magazines like Ebony with predominantly black readerships. As the American Civil Rights began to desegregate the country, there was increasingly a business case for corporations to try and reach out to the African American community. However, marketing teams remained almost exclusively white, and their approach to marketing to the black community was superficial at best.

The prevailing wisdom at the time was to appeal to a black audience. All you needed was to take the white people in an ad, and replace them with black people. The approach was as thoughtful and deep as a quick cut and paste. And yet, some of the largest ad agencies at the time scratched their heads as to why they couldn't generate any traction within the African-American community.

Tom Burrell and the Identity-Based Branding Revolution

This is the environment that Tom Burrell entered when he got his start in marketing. The industry was ripe for disruption, and he was the person to do it. At just age 18, he became one of the first African-American copywriters with the Chicago division of Wade Advertising.

After a decade of working for some of America's top ad agencies, he opened up his own consultancy in 1971, Burrell Consulting Group. One of Tom's first clients was Philip Morris, who wanted to spread the reach of Marlboro cigarettes to the African-American community. The face of the brand was The Marlboro Man.

For Philip Morris, the solution was simple: market "The Black Marlboro Man". The idea for the Black Marlboro Man was identical in every respect to the original white version, lasso and cowboy and all, just now with melanin. Tom wasn't exactly sold.

As he described to NPR, "When you start talking about a hundred years ago, you lost me on that, too, because that's the last thing I want to do is go back a hundred years with a bunch of rural, cowboy white guys - doesn't sound too safe." He soon realized that he first needed to convince his marketing colleagues before he could do any marketing himself. His philosophy is obvious to us now, but was revolutionary at the time: "Black people are not dark-skinned white people.”

With this philosophy mind, he recreated the new Black Marlboro Man from scratch. Instead of the brash, John Wayne figure, he crafted an authentic and much more relatable figure - a cool, urban figure which and entrenched in black culture. As he describes in a 2018 interview, "We got rid of the cowboy and we had the coolest guys that we could come up with going through their daily activities, smoking. That was huge."

Instead of overlaying products on a white canvas, he injected them into a relatable picture of African-American life. Creating ads through an authentic lens had never been done before. And it was incredibly effective.

The real Black Marlboro Man was a hit.

Before long, Tom had American's biggest brands knocking at his door, from Coca-Cola, to Proctor & Gamble, to Ford. These were household brands that for decades were intended for the white, "mass market" household meaning. Tom did for these brands what he did for Marlboro. He expanded their appeal to the African-American community through the lens of its own unique history, identity, and culture.

The Legacy of Tom Burrell in Today’s Brands

Tom's story is also an indictment on the lazy, superficial thinking which plagued targeted marketing in the middle of the century. It also provides a lesson for the importance of diverse advertising teams, and the importance of targeted advertisements that feel culturally authentic. Tom forever changed the orientation of the consumer world to the African-American community.

But his influence doesn't end there. He revolutionized the entire practice of targeted, identity-based marketing. NPR reporter Sonali Gibson, who interviewed Tom Burrell in 2015, had the perfect words to describe his legacy, "I feel like what Burrell did opened the door for the kind of ethnic micro-targeting that we see today. Black or white, short or tall, gay or straight - when you see an ad that seems like it was made especially for you, you're probably right. And we have Tom Burrell to thank for it."

Photo by Donny Jiang via UnSplash

References for The Black Marlboro Man and The Role of Identity in Branding

Padilla, M. (Nov. 2019). Robert Norris, Marlboro Man Who Didn’t Smoke, Dies at 90, The New York Times

The History Makers (June 5th, 2001). Thomas Burrell, The History Makers: The Nation’s Largest African American Video Oral History Collection

Glinton, S. (June 15th, 2015), How An African-American Ad Man Changed The Face Of Advertising, NPR

Hautzinger, D. (June 28th, 2018), How Tom Burrell Convinced Corporations That "Black People Are Not Dark-Skinned White People", PBS: WTTW