Chapter 4: Trademark/Name Escagraphs
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Chapter 4: Trademark/Name Escagraphs |
In this chapter, the escagraphs we will examine have a manufacturer's or a product's name on them, usually molded into the food item. They are, not unusually, more than a quarter sugar and they are used for advertising and branding. They are called Trademark/Name escagraphs for obvious reasons and are typically candy bars or cookies; Hershey's bars and Nabisco's Oreos are prominent examples. People use Trademark/Name escagraphs as snacks; manufacturers use them as advertisements. We will learn that Trademark/Name escagraphs are a powerful advertising device and owe their history to the soteltie. An examination of Milton Hershey and his candy bar is a convincing way to establish that, even though he was a proponent of "no advertising," he argued that quality was the best advertisement, a double entendre. I think we will see that, despite this apparent contradiction, the combination of the estimable strengths which writing and sugar bring to the Trademark/name escagraph make a combination just waiting to be exploited. However, I am unconvinced that Hershey was cognizant of exploitation. He believed his observation about advertising being unnecessary. But, the Hershey Company advertises today.
That said, it shouldn't come as too great a surprise your hearing that those sweet escagraphs of today owe their history to the soteltie, have more than a nodding acquaintance with the power driven message and recall sotelties of ancient feasts and monarchs. Today, they find themselves in the employ of international corporations. They rise from their slabs like new-born Frankenstein's to carry a name and a flag.
Milton Hershey[1],
born a Mennonite, began producing his famous milk chocolate Hershey bar in 1894,
and in 1895 Hershey sold the bar commercially for the first time. He was
molding his name into the top of it because he was very proud of the formula he
had worked out for milk chocolate, ignoring, as he had, European recipes.
Indirectly, he understood that the quality processes and results that he had
employed should be associated with the product itself through its
branding. The information about Hershey has come to me by way of the
Hershey Public Relations Office. Consider the implication of printing
words on food, especially one's name, for a boy born into a religious community
which disapproved of reading for pleasure.
For the next 68 years of his company's history Hershey did not condone traditional advertising. Considering the snake-oil peddlers and shills common in the late 1900's, who wouldn't be surprised that Hershey stayed focused on his product. "Give them quality. That's the best kind of advertising in the world," he was often quoted. How seriously should we take Hershey's dictum about advertising? Indeed, aggressive advertising would not have made his candy bar a best-seller if the people had not liked it. But, they did. He managed to find a combination of milk, chocolate and sugar that people clamored for and each time they ate it, they fell in thrall of the power of sugar and the power of writing which, in this case, just happened to be Hershey's name, an address where they could get more. Moreover, the consumers of this product likely began to associate not only the quality of the product but the place, circumstances and other positive notions with the consumption of chocolate with "Hershey" stamped on it. Hershey may have been unaware of the critical importance of this branding (the concept of branding wasn't formalized until 1931 when Neil H. McElroy documented such strategies while at Proctor & Gamble). But, Hershey certainly understood the importance of associating his name with his product. As certainly as the slave from Pompeii could be said to be advertising bread by putting his name on it, so it could be said that Hershey was advertising his milk chocolate.
His candy, along with his name, became a powerful use of sugar and words (a trademark/name) and delivered his message which has about it similarities to the prescriptions which, as McKenzie [2] mentioned, were as often as not swallowed along with the prescribed formula. Consumers recognized and validated the power contained in the bar, its sugar; they liked the bar as sales records indicate, and they acknowledged the language on the bar, even if it was only the name of the manufacturer, for it was, after all, writing power and the address where more could be obtained.
Let's examine the information closely regarding Hershey's acquaintance with print and candy. As a boy, Hershey worked as an apprentice to a newspaper publisher with whom he argued continuously. Hershey's mother got him a reassignment as an apprentice to a candy maker. He learned well and started a small candy business for himself in 1876. One of his early specialties was a new kind of candy called French Secrets, something like salt water taffy wrapped in paper on which Hershey had rhymes printed. French Secrets were similar to another kind of popular candy of that period called Sugar Cockles. They also carried rhymes and mottoes printed on pieces of paper but were inserted inside the cockle shaped candy instead of serving as its wrapper. In neither of these two candy forms did one eat the writing which accompanied it, but writing and its power was there, none-the-less.
Hershey wasted little time in overcoming his Mennonite upbringing concerning reading. He made use on his candy of his recently learned respect for print he had picked up at the newspaper. First, writing rhymes on the wrappers and, eventually his name directly on the bar. Yet, he was not the first to put words on candy commercially in this country.
The
Chase brothers were the first. They stamped their name on their
lozenges in 1847 and later printed words on their candy (their famous Motto
Lozenges) after Daniel Chase invented the lozenge printing machine in 1866,
Untermeyer[3].
Daniel's older brothers, Oliver and Silas Edwin founded Chase and Company in
1847 which was later to be the pioneer member of the
New England Confectioner's Company (NECCO) founded in 1901.
The Chase brothers had their name on their candy before Hershey did; but, Hershey was right about one thing, the quality of his product. As early sales indicate, the populous of North America lost no time in indicating that they liked the milk chocolate recipe which Hershey had invented. His name on the bar did not make his bar successful, the taste did, its quality. His name did bring the power of writing with it but, more importantly, acted as an address where whoever had enjoyed one of his candy bars could go to get the same pleasure again. His patrons, as well as the patrons of NECCO, not only became one with the candy made by these two candy makers, they became one with the name it carried. Together, by adding their names to their candy, NECCO and Hershey practiced a subtle kind of advertising, branding. Not unlike the physician's purgative ink prescriptions which physically altered the consumer, NECCO and Hershey mentally reconstructed him.
If you ask people to make a guess about which candy bar first carried the manufacturer's name, the overwhelming response is Hershey, not NECCO; both of which are still available. Maybe Hershey is chosen because he had, accidentally, tapped into the chocolate mania which was later to overtake the U.S. or because his recipe was so satisfying. About that he was right, quality will win out, but the inclusion of his name along with the quality of his candy, was a powerful way to remind the consumer who it was that had made what he was enjoying. The advertising advantage of writing would, of course, have been lost on a culture where literacy lagged but in the U.S., during those crucial years of the first appearance of writing on food, literacy was steadily on the increase. Decennial censuses reports, for 14 year olds and older, from 1870 forward indicate that illiteracy (defined to be: "unable to read or write in any language") was at 20% in 1870 and fell to 10.7% by 1900 decreasing steadily until in 1979 where it was measured to be 0.4 of 1.0%, National Assessment of Adult Literacy[4]. It is tempting to argue that candy, with its stamped, molded and printed words in it, on it or wrapping it, had something to do with the rapid decline in illiteracy from 1870 to 1900. But, I demur.
NECCO and Hershey captured this new concept of name recognition (the address) which has been a mainstay of branding the trademark/name way ever since. Their customers validated their advertising innovation, and made of Hershey not a naysayer, but an innovator. Hershey and the Chase Bros. created the concept of name recognition by affixing their names to each of their candies. Following is anecdotal information involving a name imprinted on candy.
The Chase brothers stamped their name on their candy
lozenges that they distributed to the United States as early as 1850. For those
that they shipped to Canada, they stamped "CANADA" on it instead of the word
"CHASE". A shipment of lozenges meant for Canadian distribution
inadvertently reached distributors in the United States and, Untermeyer writes,
"There was an outcry and sales fell off. So great was the appeal of the
original name that customers not seeing the familiar 'CHASE' were unwilling to
accept a substitute." The address was wrong, indicating that name
recognition was a growing concept in branding.
Candy bar manufacturers currently claim to put their names on their candy bars as a matter of pride. Warren Weil[5], the Director of Marketing in the early eighties for the Ward Candy Company informed me that there were two main reasons why the company molded the name Chunky on its candy bar:
Taken together, these two reasons are essential to the brand management for Chunky or any product. Branding seeks to increase the product's perceived value to the customer by aligning the brand with the desired customer expectations; in essence branding assists the customer in associating their perceptions with the intended meaning.
"Chunky" molded on the bar makes this writing a Name, that is, it was the bar's name and served the same function as Hershey's name did. It was the address of the candy bar. The word authorship that he used to describe Ward candy company's second reason for including their name on their candy bar has a curious ring about it when one considers that candy bars are manufactured not written.
The slip I just referred to is most likely due to what Ferdinand de Saussure and Roman Jakobson referred to as an associative axis error ( Hawkes[6]), that is, choosing the wrong word for a situation but choosing one that is associated with the word that would normally go in that slot. For example, using the word knife to name a fork is an associative axis error. Sometimes that error is just an accident, other times it is the sign of an aphasic condition. I would argue that Weil chose to use the word "authored" because of an associative axis inclusion, neither a slip nor an aphasic reaction. He has allowed a word normally associated with acts of writing, authored, into the paradigm of words associated with candy bar manufacturing: making, producing, molding. Weil's word use could also be the verification we need that there is a cultural memory for the power of writing possessed by some and the envy of others. I don't think Weil is an aphasic. I think he made evident an associative axis inclusion and that he used the word authorship because it has become a word he has allowed into the axis of words he associates with candy bar manufacture. It has become a part of the language his mind has stored for the activity of candy bar making.
Nabisco's[7]
Oreo cookie, is also in the Trademark/Name category. It is the name of
the world's most famous cookie. In the middle of the 1980s, Nabisco put a
cookie on the market which was called, on the wrapper, Mystic Mint. The
curious eater of this cookie was soon to discover that the Mystic Mint cookie
was none other than Nabisco's Oreo with a mint chocolate coating on the outside
which obscured the name Oreo on the cookie.
Why did Nabisco choose to package this cookie as a Mystic Mint when it was, in fact, only their tried and true Oreo in disguise? The consumer was, sooner or later, going to discover that this Mystic cookie was only their old friend, an Oreo cookie, with a mint coating. After Nabisco had assured itself of the power of their Oreo cookie, they used it again, secretively. They hid it in the cookie they were marketing under a different name, sure that we would all find it. And it is the name of the new hidden Oreo to which we need to pay attention: Mystic Mint. I feel confident, although Nabisco is not willing to reveal their reasoning, that Nabisco was creating a game for its consumers involving the mystic quality of eating words, as well as the mystical power of language, by giving us the pleasure of discovering the hidden word Oreo inside the mint covered Mystic Mint. This is strong advertising, similar to the ploy Winston cigarettes used decades ago by allowing the television viewer or radio listener to complete their jingle which, once introduced and lodged in the buying public's minds, they now neglected to finish knowing that the listener would finish it for them. "WINSTON TASTES GOOD LIKE A (CLAP CLAP) _________". That tactic is called subliminal interaction. Nabisco did a very competent job of subliminally reinforcing Oreo in our minds by hiding it.
Currently, in keeping with what would appear to be full disclosure, the Nabisco web site carries the information that there is no definite beginning for the word they chose for the world's most popular cookie, Oreo. They say it could be for the French word or for gold, which was the color used on the first packaging for the cookie; they say it could be the Greek word for mountain which is Oreo (the first Oreo cookies were shaped like hills) and they mention more possibilities but give no solid answer to the word choice for the introduction of a cookie that cornered the world's imagination. That, nicely, keeps the word Oreo in that realm of words, the meaning or origin of which are unknown but powerful and nicely mystic. Nabisco has sold well over 362 billion Oreos to date and since they have been producing them for 89 years, that would be an average production of better the 4.1 billion a year. The chocolate-mint covered Oreo is still produced.
The Trademark/Name escagraph's use is often determined by the desire for a break or snack (interval eating), and we have seen how NECCO and Hershey used that moment to accomplish the task of selling their candy. Candy and cookie manufacturers today, who put their company trademark or product name on their goods, are not so much advertising as they are supplying the user with a moment of rest in which he is powerful and magical and in the midst of a significant rite, a feeling which he attributes to the qualities of the product eaten during the break and, it is their address.
Having said that, I want to draw your attention to a sentence which appears to be a contradiction in the paragraph you just read: "A moment of rest in which he is powerful and magical..." Contradictions appear with regularity in our culture's agreement on what a rest break is. First, to convince you of their significance, remember that they are a mandated and scheduled removal of the worker from the workplace. Secondly, it is during these "rest periods" that we typically consume stimulants: caffeine, sugar, nicotine and, as I have pointed out, powerfully marked and often sweet commodities that are designed to raise the mental and physical alertness of the individual[8].
The contradiction which is apparent is a bipolarity, or a meaning reversal, which the culture has invented and associated with food. Barthes tells us that coffee has become the recognized signal for the interruption of work, a rest break, even though as H.E. Jacob[9]pointed out in his marvelous and much lauded 1935 publication Coffee, it is a stimulant of a powerful order, and was originally understood to make rest (sleep) unnecessary because of the chemical agent trimethyldioxypurin. Here, again, is the power of food as a system of communication exemplified.
Trademark/Name escagraphs are made with sugar 7.7% of the time, cause for another significant kind of "high", and these foods show up during rest breaks with regularity. Some rest break snacks are not sweet but do carry writing (another source of a power "high") such as soda crackers and ice cream cones both of which carry the maker's trademark molded into the food. The latter item, it is obvious, is intended to hold a sweet food. Here is the place to remind the reader of my use of the word transparent to describe the writing on escagraphs. We hardly notice the writing, but, it is there.
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