Two years ago this month, Philip Morris, Inc., lit the long-cigarette craze with its two-puffs, three-puffs, maybe-even-five-puffs longer, 100-mm. Benson & Hedges. Sales increased so suddenly that all cigarette companies rushed into the longs market. Of the 17 new brands, 15 were 100-mm.; of these, 13 were stretch versions of existing brands. Long cigarettes now have 13% of the market, and the field is getting overcrowded.
Philip Morris this week is trying a new approach. The company has come out nationally with Virginia Slims, a 100-mm. regular or menthol filter cigarette that it hails as "the cigarette for women only."
Philip Morris discovered women smokers now account for 42% of a market that last year consumed 527.8 billion cigarettes. And the "swinging woman of the '60s," to whom the company is pitching its Slims, apparently likes the idea of a cigarette of her own. Test-marketed in the San Francisco Bay area, the new brand rapidly gathered 1½% of all sales; additional cartons had to be shipped in by air. Since 1% is considered a good share of the market for any brand, Philip Morris decided to skip the two more months of planned testing and go with Virginia Slims nationally.
Virginia Slims live up to their name by being longer and thinner than most. The new cigarette is 23 mm. in circumference v. 25 for most cigarettes. "It's the esthetics that are important," says Philip Morris Vice President John Landry. "A girl has to feel comfortable holding it and smoking it." Leo Burnett Co., the ad agency, intends to pitch them to the emancipated woman, who, along with the right to vote, can now have a cigarette made for her. "You've got your own cigarette now, baby," cool TV commercials for Slims. "You've come a long long way." To emphasize the point, Virginia Slims will be sold in soft-colored "purse packs" that few men will feel like filching from.