Marching Morris

To most tobacco companies, advertising is more important than tobacco. When P. Lorillard Co. put Old Golds, on the market in 1926, it floated a $15,060,000 bond issue solely to finance promotion. Camel advertising costs R. J. Reynolds Tobacco Co. some $10,000,000 annually. But during Depression, two oldtime tobacco men discovered another and a cheaper method of selling cigarets. They were Reuben Morris ("Rube") Ellis, long time president of Philip Morris & Co. and Leonard Burnham ("Mac") McKitterick. Their cigaret was Philip Morris English Blend, which is now crowding Old Gold for fourth place in the roster of fastest selling U. S. brands. Their company was Philip Morris & Co. which, before they got their bright idea, made cigarets but not Philip Morris English Blends.

Last week Philip Morris & Co. reported profits of $2,400,000 for the fiscal year through March. That was nearly $1,000,000 more than the year before, and almost five times the figure for 1933, the year that Messrs. Ellis and McKitterick crashed not the 10-c- field, which was then booming, but the toughest field of all, 15-c-.

The rise of Philip Morris dates from 1931, when Messrs. Ellis and McKitterick, with some friends, got control of Philip Morris and Continental Tobacco Co. When they took stock of the business, they found themselves with various pipe tobaccos, expiring luxury cigarets and the two volume brands, Paul Jones (10-c-) and Marlboro (20-c-). Marlboro had always done well, was earning dividends for the whole company. But its 500,000,000-per-year sales were about the top for a 2O-c- brand. In Paul Jones there was little money at 10-c-. Nevertheless, Paul Jones and other 10-c- brands had scared the Big Four into deep price-cutting on Camels, Chesterfields, Lucky Strikes and Old Golds, with the result that the profit margin for dealers was down to almost nothing.

Messrs. Ellis & McKitterick were well aware of the fact that the dealer was fed up with profitless prosperity. They also knew that they enjoyed considerable personal prestige in the trade. As crack salesmen for the old Tobacco Trust, later for Melachrino, and then as vice presidents of Tobacco Products Corp., they had built up reputations for giving dealers a break. President Ellis could cash a check in any cigar store in any U. S. city of 5,000 or more. All in all, the time seemed ripe for a 15-c- cigaret that really sold for 15-c-.

In January 1933 Philip Morris English Blends were put in the hands of U.S. dealers. The understanding was that Philip Morris was Rube's and Mac's "baby" and, if dealers loved Rube and Mac, they would not cut prices. They did not cut, then or later. But Rube Ellis never lived to see his cigaret burn bright. Few months after it was launched, he dropped dead, and Philip Morris was left to Mac McKitterick.

Philip Morris sales boomed from the start. But to give them added impetus, President McKitterick speeded up research on a hygroscopic agent called diethylene glycol. A hygroscopic agent is what attracts and retains moisture in tobacco. Most cigarets use glycerin. Chemists discovered, however, that when diethylene glycol is burned, unlike glycerin, it does not give off an irritant called acrolein. That was a neat find indeed, and it promptly went into Philip Morris advertising, though Philip Morris claimed that it had been using the agent all along.

President McKitterick then took his diethylene glycol to Columbia University pharmacologists, had them experiment. They put a solution of smoke from cigarets containing the new hygroscopic agent under the eyelid of a rabbit. To President McKitterick's delight, it produced less swelling than a solution from cigarets using glycerin and, curiously, less than a solution from cigarets using no hygroscopic agent at all. How much this test really proved is still a matter of debate. A solution of smoke is not smoke, a rabbit's eye is not a human throat and almost nothing is known about the effects of smoking, anyway.

Great was the relief of pharmacologists, therefore, when President McKitterick withdrew the acrolein advertising story pending further experiments, which are still going on. Sole use now of the diethylene glycol angle is among doctors. In some 40 medical journals, and there only, Philip Morris runs quiet advertising about its hygroscopic agent. At every big medical convention Philip Morris salesmen pass out packs to the delegates, discuss cigaret pharmacology with them in learned language.

The play to the medical profession has proved almost as good promotion as the discovery in some old Philip Morris copy of a picture of a bellhop over the caption, "Call for Philip Morris." The best live bellhop in Manhattan was then found in the person of a dwarf named John Roventini, whose bellhopping ability was famed far beyond the Hotel New Yorker, where he worked. He is now 25, weighs 54 lb., stands 3 ft. 7 in. high. Known far & wide as Johnnie Morris, he pipes his call over :he radio, passes out packs of cigarets at Banquets, luncheons, openings, reunions, rides around in an Austin with a chauffeur, costs Philip Morris some $20,000 per year in salary and expenses.

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