He is rugged and handsome. He inhabits a world of dramatic sunsets, rocky canyons and blood-red mountains — and he is a chain-smoker.

One of his original incarnations may have died of lung cancer, but the Marlboro Man remains a global icon and a gargantuan cash cow for its owner, Philip Morris.

Last year, worldwide sales of Marlboro topped 467 billion cigarettes, helping to ring up tobacco profits of $13.3 billion (£6.7 billion) for Altria Group, the parent company of Philip Morris USA and Philip Morris International.

But while Marlboro is still easily the world’s biggest-selling cigarette — with 33 per cent of the 1,420 billion cigarette market — tobacco industry experts say that the brand is in decline and simply does not have the cachet or the power to entrance consumers that it once had.

In 2000, Marlboro commanded a 39 per cent share of the global market. Since then volumes have drifted 4 per cent lower at a time when, contrary to popular belief, the global market for tobacco continues to grow, although not in mature markets.

Against this background of stagnant volumes and slowly sagging profits, particularly in Europe, many in the embattled tobacco industry are asking if the Marlboro Man can ever regain his former glory.

“There have been some challenges over the past couple of years,” admits Jim Scully, senior vice-president for brand building at Philip Morris International, the Geneva-based subsidiary that markets Marlboro outside the US.

Altria Group will hold a board meeting later this month at which it is expected to announce the spin-off of Philip Morris International, meaning that, for the first time, the Marlboro brand will be marketed by two independent companies.

It is not just health concerns, rising taxes, regulation and smoking bans that are killing Marlboro. All the big cigarette brands face these common threats, but Marlboro has increasingly seen its market share hoovered up by smaller brands like Dunhill, Lucky Strike, Pall Mall and Kent.

Global volumes of these four brands, produced by British American Tobacco, have grown by 57 per cent since 2001. “In the past four to five years we have probably not been aggressive enough in innovating around the product,” says Mr Scully.

To the uninitiated, the concept of “innovation” in the cigarette market may seem bizarre. But in an industry where direct communication with customers through advertising has become extremely difficult, if not impossible, selling cigarettes has increasingly revolved around the creation of new variations on existing brands — slims, wides, lites or menthol versions — wrapped up in gimmicky packaging in an effort to entice new consumers to give them a try or to switch.

While Marlboro remains reasonably stable in the US and a popular “aspirational” cigarette in developing countries such as Russia and Indonesia, David Ireland, tobacco analyst at ABN Amro, says that Marlboro’s one-size-fits-all approach is less appealing to today’s increasingly picky consumers in wealthier countries.

Cigarette smokers, like consumers in many fields, are simply less willing to buy what are viewed as generic, mass-market brands. Cocoa Cola, McDonalds and the Ford Mondeo are other examples.

“Marlboro is simply a dinosaur,” says Robert Jones of the brand consultancy Wolff Ollins. “It is a 20th century brand that is dying a death in the 21st century. It’s also the greatest example ever of a brand built on nothing but myth.”

Certainly, the origins of this quintessentially American brand are surprising. First launched in 1924, it was named after Great Marlborough Street in London, where Philip Morris, then a British company, had one of its first factories.

Marlboro cigarettes were initially marketed mainly to women under the advertising motto “Mild as May” — a far cry from the cowboy machismo of later years.

It was not until the 1950s that the brand took on its current form, after Philip Morris adopted an extraordinarily successful campaign under the guidance of US advertising guru Leo Burnett — also the creator of the Jolly Green Giant and Tony the Tiger.

His invention of the Marlboro Man in 1954 was one of the greatest marketing successes in history.

Marlboro sales surged from 1.6 per cent of the US market in 1955 to 4.8 per cent in 1957, as consumers rushed to buy into the romantic imagery of “Marlboro Country”, with its notions of freedom and authenticity.

The brand’s success was enhanced by Philip Morris’s shrewd decision to combine masculine imagery with the introduction of a filter tip at a time when health concerns about smoking were just starting to affect consumer behaviour. The brand’s success in America was just the start of an extraordinary ride to global popularity. By 1972, Marlboro had emerged as the world’s biggest-selling cigarette.

Since then, the Marlboro Man has enjoyed a long, glorious ride as, in Mr Scully’s words, “the only truly global cigarette brand”. However, it seems Philip Morris has only recently realised that it may be headed into the sunset and that its market position needs to be defended.

This has been aggravated by rising taxes that have prompted many consumers to switch over to cheaper brands. “We are not sitting back on our laurels,” he says. “We are embracing the fact that we have to change.”

Mr Scully cites the launch last year of Marlboro Wides, a shorter, thicker version of the original, in the EU and Mexico, and Marlboro Filter Plus in Russia and Korea. In Indonesia, the company has unveiled a cloveflavoured tobacco.

“We are not betting the ranch on one of these but they can differentiate the Marlboro brand,” Mr Scully says.

Unsurprisingly, he rejects the idea that the Marlboro brand is tired: “The passion and loyalty of our smokers is amazing.”

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