Indiana has given many wonderful things to the United States: Garfield, James Dean and Michael Jackson to name three.
But arguably the greatest thing that Indiana has given to the USA is Wonder Bread!
It's 1921 and strange advertisements have been appearing in your newspaper for weeks. One declares:
Wonder?
How often to you use this word every day?
— Check yourself
Then the next day you see this:
Wonder
Noah Webster says:
— Something exhibiting great skill or other remarkable quality
— Marvel
— Something out of the ordinary
"What's going on?" you ask yourself. Your interest is well and truly piqued.
In the middle of May, you see this:
Wonder
You've wondered now for several days,
You've checked yourself in many ways,
The word, you know, you'll not forget,
But the real WONDER is unknown yet.
Just remember this—you'll never find
A WONDER of a better kind.
Finally, on May 21, 1921, the answer was revealed: Wonder Bread appears in the grocery stores!
It was a brilliant piece of viral marketing, decades before viral marketing was invented.
The Taggart Baking Co. wanted to produce a new 1.5 pound loaf of bread. They turned to Elmer Cline, vice-president for marketing strategy.
While taking in the International Balloon Race at the Indianapolis Speedway, Cline was captivated by the scenes of hundreds of balloons creating a kaleidoscope of color across the Midwestern sky. (Leo Gong The Wonder Bread Cookbook, Berkeley 2007:2)
In 1925 Continental Baking bought Taggart and Wonder Bread became a national brand. Cline's distinctive logo--stylized versions of the balloons he saw over Indianapolis--and the brilliantly simple name took the nation by storm.
In 1930 Wonder Bread became the first sliced bread to be marketed nationally. The bread-slicing machine had been invented in Iowa in 1913, but it had taken years to perfect the system, Wonder Bread was at the cutting edge of technology.
It seemed to be a wonderful success story. But troubles were just around the corner.
In the Middle Ages, white bread had been a status symbol. It cost money to refine flour, so peasants made do with wholewheat flour to make their bread. It was only aristocrats who could afford to buy white flour for their bread. If you could afford white bread, it showed you had made it in society.
With mechanization white flour became more affordable and suddenly everyone could share in the luxury of white bread. Wonder Bread represents the pinnacle of this, and the triumph of the modern way of life: it was the moment when a luxury affordable only to a few finally became affordable to everyone.
The problem was that it wasn't very good for you.
It turned out that all that extra refining took out all the stuff that made bread healthful. People had known white flour wasn't very good for you since the early nineteenth century, but it wasn't until the mid-twentieth century that people began to take it seriously.
In the 1930s white bread manufacturers were encouraged to add vitamins and minerals to their product to replace what the refining process took out. This became law in 1956.
But this wasn't enough to stop the decline of Wonder Bread in the face of a sustained attack from whole wheat bread. In the midst of a vicious war and staring into the jaws of defeat, Wonder Bread fought back!
Wonder Bread ran TV spots where they stressed that they equaled--or exceeded--federal standards for bread nutrition. This example is from 1985:
This approach didn't go down too well, though. In 1971, the Federal Trade Commission look set to take Wonder Bread to court for false advertising. While their advertisements had stressed the plusses of white bread, they neglected to mention the significant drawbacks in comparison to whole wheat bread (e.g. a lack of fiber). As The Bryan Times of October 21, 1971 pointed out
Wonder Bread... could test the FTC's allegation that ads pushing a products nutritive value should also admit any nutritional deficiencies.
In the end, the case was never brought and Wonder Bread breathed a sigh of relief.
The shift in Wonder Bread's advertising campaign in the late 1960s is striking. Before whole wheat bread's health benefits had become an issue, Wonder Bread was marketed as a product for all the family and as a healthful product.
After the 1960s the advertising becomes more defensive and subtle. In addition to advertisements--such as the one above--which cheekily claim that Wonder Bread is as healthful as whole wheat bread, they ran ads which marketed it as a necessary evil for parents: it may not be as healthful as wholewheat bread, but at least you could get children to eat Wonder Bread!
At the same time, they ran TV spots specifically designed to appeal to kids:
Despite this rearguard action, it seemed as though Wonder Bread's days were numbered. Or were they?
Here's the weird thing: not only is Wonder Bread still here, but sales of white bread have actually risen since the 1980s! It looks as though the brilliant marketing mojo which brought Wonder Bread to the public eye in 1921 is still working today!
Text and photographs: Richard Peevers
2 comments:
*gag* wonderbread. It also happens to be about 90% AIR!
November 5, 2009 5:17 AMYeah, it's not my favourite.
November 5, 2009 9:15 AMWhat I can't find out is whether it was the same airy, sweet, cake-like product in 1921 that it is now. It's quite possible that it was perfectly normal bread until e.g. Continental took them over.
Post a Comment