Thread by @_groww

Cigarette smoking is injurious to health.

Yes, we know this all too well today but there was a time the general public wasn’t so sure.

Around the 1950s, against the wishes of some companies, new research surfaced - cigarettes are bad.

Cigarette brands were suddenly panicking. How would they sell?

Many big brands back then resorted to measures they hoped would be enough.

Better filters, lesser tobacco content, higher quality paper, and a bunch of other tactics were used. The marketing campaign for them was equally hyped.

But none of these actually proved to make cigarette smoking noticeably safer.

A particular cigarette brand, one that wasn’t very famous, decided to approach the problem differently.

In their marketing material, they barely even spoke about their cigarette - something nobody had done.

How is it an advertisement about a product if you don't even talk about the product?

What they did was, they portrayed a very manly cowboy, going about his tough and rugged lifestyle - feeding milk to foal, caring for and playing with his horses in a farm, the entire thing.

People loved it.

Everybody wanted to be that man. Or at least, they wanted others to think they were that man.

The cowboy was running with his horses, feeding foal, caring for his animals - many would like to do that but most wouldn’t go so far as buying a farm and then living on it.

He was also smoking this one brand’s cigarette. That’s easy. Most people could do that.

The company went from being a name nobody knew to being the top tobacco brand in the world.

Marlboro.

If you want to know more about this campaign, search ‘Marlboro man’ on the internet.

With the cowboy lifestyle ad, Marlboro had started lifestyle marketing.

Look around yourself. Lifestyle marketing is more common than you realize.

Nike ads don’t talk about how good their shoes are. They show an athletic person going about the mental and physical struggles of a sportsperson.

Redbull doesn’t talk much about the drink it makes. It just plasters its logo all over events attended by young folk - formula 1 racing, mountain biking, aerial acrobatics, concerts, you name it.

Apple doesn’t talk about how much RAM the iPhone has. It just makes ads that make you want to be the person in the ad.

Coca-Cola doesn’t tell you about their drink. They just show happy and excited people drinking Coca-Cola.

Marlboro didn’t invent anything here. It just discovered it.

Have you looked at a policeman as a kid and thought he was really cool? Have you wanted to wear that uniform and walk around making sure your neighborhood was safe?

That’s you wanting a certain lifestyle.

Have you felt like dressing similar to how industrial tycoons dress?

You imagine yourself being that person because you imagine their lifestyle is desirable and the most easily attainable part of their lifestyle is what you first get.

Can you build the factories and offices the tycoon has? Maybe, but it’ll take time.

Can you dress like that person?

Yes, very easily. So that’s where you start.

A great number of our aspirations are driven by our cravings for a certain lifestyle.

Whether this is acceptable in life or not, is a debate for another day.

But the one place it isn’t acceptable at all is investing.

Many people are made to think investing is about constantly buying and selling stocks, it’s about having multiple screens with graphs on them, it’s about constantly tracking every single move the market makes and then always taking action - these are easy to do.

It has amplified even more with the rising popularity of 24x7 trading - as the cost of acquiring a smartphone or computer with good internet is very low.

Actual investing isn’t about these.

In actual investing, these activities are a result of what happens before that - learning, researching, and thinking.

A lot of times, investing is actually about not doing anything at all - just waiting.

As a new investor, make sure that you do this right.

Don’t chase the investor lifestyle.

Be an actual investor.

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