Mr. Adelman agreed. "Better to lose volume to yourself than to your competition," he said.

A crucial distinction between the Medium campaign and Burnett's traditional Marlboro work is the cowboy's absence. In his place are his accoutrements -- boots, saddles, spurs -- in oversized photographs carrying the theme "A special place in Marlboro Country."

Research among smokers, Mr. Dangoor said, indicated the ads' fresher look has improved "the advertising likeability rate for Marlboro as a whole." That is important when critics like the marketing consultant Al Ries of Trout Ries Inc. in Chicago, <a href=usasmokingsale.com ">Newport 100S</a> said: "We don't want to fool around with the cowboy. But how do you show a hip side of Marlboro?

"You take the items from his life and present them in a contemporarily graphic way."

Marlboro Medium's ad budget, estimated at $40 million to $45 million, underscores the company's elaborate efforts to re-emphasize its more profitable full-price brands.

As pleased as Mr. Dangoor is with Marlboro Medium, he is overjoyed, in a characteristically low-key fashion, about new Merit Ultima, a version of his Merit brand with 1 milligram of tar and also handled by Burnett.

Smoking a Merit Ultima that he lit with a Marlboro lighter, he said Merit Ultima has already achieved an eight-tenths of 1 percent share despite <a href=vonderhain.com/marlboro ">Marlboro Cigarettes Price</a> appealing to a narrower segment of smokers than Marlboro Medium. (Mr. Adelman called the Ultima concept "expandable to other products," even Marlboro.)

As for the critics' early carping about Medium, Mr. Dangoor said: "All great ideas started off by people saying it was a crazy thought. All the normal ideas you expect to be good fail."