Modern Advertising of Food and Drinks II

Modern Advertising of Food and Drinks II
Postum, created in 1895 by Charles W. Post, was just one of many new foods concocted around the turn of the 20th century. The most notable of these were breakfast cereals like Post’s own Grape-Nuts, Kellogg’s Corn Flakes and the products of the Shredded Wheat Company.

Advertising was the heart and soul of the cereal business from the beginning, The pioneer in this regard was Henry Crowell of the Quaker Oats Company. He was to register a trademark for a cereal in 1877 and he promoted his brand by plastering signs on barns, trains and even the white cliffs of Dover.

Crowell came up with the idea of giving away bowls and saucers as a premium. In imitation of the patent medicine sellers his ads made various unsubstantiated medical claims.

Before Crowell campaign, oatmeal had been relatively rare in the United States but now who could turn down a food that promised to “supply what brains and bodies need....with more proteins, more phosphorus more lecithin than any other food”?

By 1942, Kellogg Company figures showed that they had spent approximately $100 million on advertising.

For most of the 19th century, there was no such thing as a breakfast cereal, by the mid 20th century, 50 percent of Americans would be eating an ounce or so of it every day.
Modern Advertising of Food and Drinks II