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Chapter XXVIII

A SHORT HISTORY OF COFFEE ADVERTISING

In a work of this character the chapter on advertising must of necessity be in story form. It may tell what has been accomplished in advertising coffee, and perhaps point the way to greater achievement. In so far as possible, the story is supplemented by illustrations, which here tell the story even better than words.

Advertising to the trade or the consumer calls for expert advice. There are successful trade journalists who are competent to supply such advertising counsel; and new-comers in the field should consult them first. These men are in the best position to suggest the means for successful accomplishment. They know the men who are best qualified to render assistance for all media, and are glad to recommend those who can be most helpful.

Jarvis A. Wood has said that advertising is causing another to know, to remember, and to do. If we agree with this excellent definition, then the first coffee advertisers were the early physicians and writers who told their fellows something about the berry and the beverage made from it.

Rhazes and Avicenna told the story in Latin, and appear to have recommended a coffee decoction as a stomachic, as far back as the tenth century. Many other early physicians refer to it. Thus it was that coffee was solemnly introduced to the consumer as a medicine. The first step made by the berry from the cabinets of the curious, where it was known as an exotic seed, was into the apothecaries' shops, where it was sold and advertised as a drug. Next, the coffee drink was advertised and sold by lemonade venders; then by the proprietors of the coffee houses and cafés; and finally the coffee merchant sold and advertised the green and roasted bean.

Rauwolf told the Germans about it in 1582; Abd-al-Kâdir wrote his famous Argument in favor of the legitimate use of coffee in Arabic about 1587; Alpini carried the news to Italy in 1592; English travelers wrote about the beverage in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries; French Orientalists described it about the same time; and America learned about it long before the green beans were offered for sale in Boston in 1670.

Because of its frank propaganda character, Abd-al-Kâdir's manuscript may rightly be called the earliest advertisement for coffee. The author was a lawyer-theologian, a follower of Mahomet, and as such was eager to convince his contemporaries that coffee drinking was not incompatible with the prophet's law.

Soon the news of the day became the advertising of the morrow. In 1652 appeared the first printed advertisement for coffee in English. It was in the form of a shop-bill, or handbill, issued by Pasqua Rosée from the first London coffee house in St. Michael's Alley, Cornhill; and the original is preserved in the British Museum.

It is pictured on page 55, chapter X, and is worthy of close examination. It reads:

The noteworthy thing about this advertisement is, that in comparison with the best copy of today, it has high merit. For this early advertisement seems to have embodied in it superbly well those qualifications which modern advertising experts agree are essential requirements for success—measured in terms of sales to the consumer. We shall return to it later.

The first newspaper advertisement for coffee appeared in the form of a "reader" in the issue of The Publick Adviser, London, for the week of Tuesday, May 19, to Tuesday, May 26, 1657. The Publick Adviser was a weekly pamphlet partaking of the nature of a commercial news-letter. The advertisement was sandwiched between a reader advertising a doctor of physick and one for an "artificer," the latter being a ladies' hair-dresser. It was as follows:

About the time that Pascal opened the first coffee house in Paris in 1672, the Paris shop-keepers began to advertise coffee by broadsides. A good example is the following,[345] the text of which closely resembles the original by Pasqua Rosée:

The following are typical London trade advertisements of 1662 and 1663. The first is from the Kingdom's Intelligencer of June 5, 1662, and reads as follows:

The Intelligencer for December 21, 1663, contained the following advertisement:

Dufour's treatise on The Manner of Making Coffee, Tea and Chocolate, published in Lyons, 1684, was generally regarded as propaganda for the beverage; and, indeed, it proved an excellent advertisement, being quickly translated into English and several other languages.

In 1691 we find advertised in the Livre Commode of Paris a portable coffee-making outfit to fit the pocket.

The first coffee periodical, The New and Curious Coffee House, was issued at Leipzig by Theophilo Georgi in 1707, being a kind of house organ for what was, perhaps, the first kaffee-klatsch; the publisher-proprietor, however, admitted that the idea of making his coffee salon a resort for the literati was obtained from Italy.

In chapter X we have described a number of broadsides, handbills, and pamphlets having to do with the introduction of the coffee drink into London between 1652 and 1675. The advertising student would do well to refer to them because they serve to show how completely the true merits of the beverage were lost sight of by those who urged its more fantastic claims. It is interesting to note, however, that this early copy was of a high order of typographical excellence; indeed, the display letter used for the word coffee is often like that found in copy in the United States two hundred and fifty years after. Also, it should be noted that "apt 'illustration's' artful aid" was first employed in 1674. Again, note this curious contrast. Two hundred and sixty-nine years ago all the resources of advertising were being laid under contribution to make propaganda for coffee as the great cure for many ailments of which nowadays the enemies of coffee would have us believe coffee is the cause! Those who have possessed themselves of the facts about coffee know that both arguments are equally fantastic.

Coffee was mentioned in shop-keepers' announcements appearing in the Boston News Letter as early as 1714, and in other newspapers of the colonies during the eighteenth century, usually being offered for sale at retail with strange companions. In 1748 "tea, coffee, indigo, nutmegs, sugar, etc.," were advertised for sale at a shop in Dock Square, Boston. The following advertisement from the Columbian Centinel, Boston, April 26, 1794, is typical:

It appears that the first advertisement dealing with coffee alone was published in the New York Daily Advertiser for February 9, 1790; and this was primarily an advertisement of a wholesale coffee roasting factory rather than an advertisement of coffee per se.

This advertisement, and a later one published in Loudon's New York Packet for January 1, 1791, also of a coffee manufactory, are reproduced herewith.

Not until package coffee began to come into vogue in the sixties was there any change in the stereotyped business-card form followed by all dealers in coffee. And even then the monotony was varied only by inserting the brand name, such as "Osborn's Celebrated Prepared Java Coffee. Put up only by Lewis A. Osborn"; "Government coffee in tin foil pound papers put out by Taber & Place's Rubia Mills."

Evolution of Coffee Advertising

Real progress in coffee advertising, as in publicity for other lines of trade and industry, began in the United States. Here too, it has been brought to its lowest degradation and to its highest efficiency. The entire process has taken something less than fifty years.

The first step forward was the picture handbill. The handbill, or dodger, had been common enough in England and on the Continent, where, for upward of two hundred years it had served as an advertising medium, in company with the more robust broadside, and in competition with the pamphlet and newspaper. It remained for America, however, to glorify the handbill by means of colored pictures; and one of the earliest and best specimens of the picture handbill is the Arbuckle circular here illustrated.

Soon the handbill copy began to appear in the newspapers, but mostly without the illustrations. Later newspaper developments were to introduce more of the picture element, decorative border, and design. The ideas of European artists were freely drawn upon, but put to so utilitarian uses that their originators would scarce have recognized them.

In the Ladies Home Journal for December, 1888, the Great London Tea Company, Boston, an early mail-order house, advertised, "We have made a specialty since 1877 of giving premiums to those who buy tea and coffee in large quantities." In the same issue, there was an advertisement of Seal Brand and Crusade Brand coffee by Chase & Sanborn, Boston. Dilworth Bros., Pittsburgh, were also among the early users of magazine space.

The menace of the cereal coffee-substitute evil had grown to such proportions at the beginning of the twentieth century, that the coffee men began to be concerned about it. Misleading and untruthful "substitute" copy was freely accepted by nearly all media. The package labels were as bad, if not worse. With the advent of the pure food law of 1906, the cereal label abuse was reformed; but not until the "truth in advertising" movement became a power to be reckoned with, nearly ten years later, were the coffee men granted a substantial measure of protection in the magazines and newspapers. Meanwhile, many coffee men, lacking organization and a knowledge of the facts about coffee, unwittingly played into the hands of the substitute-fakers by publishing unfortunate defensive copy which made confusion worse confounded in the consumer's mind.

At one time there were nearly one hundred coffee-substitute concerns engaged in a bitter, untruthful campaign directed against coffee. The most conspicuous offender employed the principle of auto-suggestion and found a goodly number of pseudo-physicians and bright advertising minds that were quite willing to prostitute their finest talents to aid him in attacking an honorable business.

In one year $1,765,000 was spent in traducing the national beverage. The burden of the cereal-faker's song was that coffee was the cause of all the ills that flesh is heir to, and that by stopping its use for ten days and substituting his panacea, these ills would vanish.

Of course, there were many people (but they were the minority) who knew that the caffein content of coffee was a pure, safe stimulant that did not destroy the nerve cells like such false stimulants as alcohol, morphine, etc.; and that while too much could be ingested from abuse of any beverage containing it, nature always effected a cure when the abuse was stopped.

However, there was undoubtedly created in the public mind a suspicion, that threatened to develop into a prejudice, and that affected otherwise sane and normal people, that perhaps coffee was not good for them.

Then came the winter of the coffee men's discontent. Floundering about in a veritable slough of cereal slush, without secure foothold or a true sense of direction, coffee advertising went miserably astray when its writers began to assure the public that their brands were guiltless of the crimes charged in the cereal men's indictment. In this, of course, they unwittingly aided and abetted the cereal fakers. For example, one roaster-packer advertised, "The harmful ingredient in coffee is the tannin-bearing chaff, which our roasting and grinding process completely removes." Scientific research has since proved the fallacy of this idea.

Another roaster said, "if coffee works havoc with your nerves and digestion, it is because you are not using a fresh roasted, thoroughly cleaned, correctly cured coffee. Our method of preparing gives you the strength and aroma without its nerve-destroying qualities." A well known coffee packer advertised, "Our coffee is free from the dust and bitter tannin—the only injurious property in coffee." Still another packer informed the consumer that "by a very special steel cutting process" he sliced the coffee beans "so that the little cells containing the volatile oil (the food product) are not broken."

A prominent Chicago packer put out a new brand of coffee which he claimed was "non-intoxicating," "poisonless," and the "only pure coffee." A New Yorker, not to be out-done, brought out a coffee that he said contained all the stimulative properties of the original coffee berries, but with every trace of acid removed, every undesirable element eliminated. "Also," he added for good measure, "this coffee may be used freely without harming the digestive organs or impairing the nervous system."

And one package-coffee man became so exercised over cereal competition that he brought out a grain "coffee" of his own, which he actually advertised as "the nearest approach to coffee ever put on the market, having all the merits without any objectionable features, strengthening without stimulating, satisfying without shattering the nerves."

And so history again repeated itself in America. Five hundred years after the first religious persecution of the drink in Arabia, we find it being persecuted by commercial zealots in the United States. And even in the house of its friends, coffee was being stabbed in the back. The coffee merchants themselves presented the spectacle of "knocking" it by inference and innuendo.

Something had to be done. As cereal drinks, standing on their own feet, the coffee "substitutes" would have attracted little notice. It was only by trading on the allegation that they were substitutes for coffee that they made any headway. The original offender sold his product as "coffee," which was an untruth, as he later admitted there was not a bean of coffee in it. He boldly advertised: "Blank coffee for persons who can't digest ordinary coffee."

When it became no longer possible to perpetrate an untruth on the package label, there still remained the newspapers and billboards. For years before fake-advertising laws and an outraged public opinion made recourse to these no longer possible, it was a common practise to use the newspapers and billboards to promote the idea that here was a different coffee; and in this way to create a demand for a package, which, when purchased, was found to tell a different story.

As late as 1911, one of our most respected New York dailies was carrying an advertisement calling the product "coffee," although fairness demands it be recorded that the coffee part of the announcement was stricken out when The Tea and Coffee Trade Journal called the attention of the publisher to its misleading character. This trade paper, from its start, had been urging the coffee men to organize for defense. The agitation bore fruit at last, first in the starting of the National Coffee Roasters Association, and later in the inception of the movement that resulted in the international advertising campaign for coffee now in progress in the United States.

Meanwhile, the cereal coffee-substitute had been thoroughly discredited by governmental analysis, although even today newspaper publishers are to be found here and there who are willing to "take a chance" with public opinion and who will admit to their advertising columns such misleading statements for the substitute, as "it has a coffee-like flavor."

In the United States today, coffee advertising has reached a high plane of copy excellence. Our coffee advertisers lead all nations. The educational work started by The Tea and Coffee Trade Journal, fostered by the National Coffee Roasters Association, and developed by the Joint Coffee Trade Publicity Committee, has laid low many of the bugaboos raised by the cereal sinners. The coffee men, however, have left considerable room for improvement. There are still some who are given to making exaggerated claims in their publicity, who make reflections upon competitors in a way to destroy public confidence in coffee, and who display an ignorance of, or a lack of confidence in, their product by continuing to claim that their brands do not contain what they assert are injurious or worthless constituents. It is to be hoped that in time these abuses will yield to the further enlightening influence of the trade press, and of the organizations that are continually working for trade betterment.

Before the international coffee campaign started in 1919, the National Coffee Roasters Association promoted two national coffee weeks, one in 1914 and another in 1915, wherein excellent groundwork was done for the big joint coffee trade propaganda that followed. Some original research also was done along lines of proper grinding and correct coffee brewing. A better-coffee-making committee, under the direction of Edward Aborn of New York, rendered yeoman's service to the cause. Much educational work was done in schools and colleges, among newspaper editors, and in the trade. This campaign was the first co-operative publicity for coffee. Among other things, it put a nation-wide emphasis on iced coffee as a delectable summer drink and, for the first time, stressed the correct making of the beverage by drip and filtration methods instead of by boiling, which had long been one of the most crying evils of the business.

Package Coffee Advertising

Coffee advertising began to take on a distinctive character with the introduction of Ariosa by John Arbuckle in 1873. Some of the early publicity for this pioneer package coffee appears typographically crude, judged by modern standards; but the copy itself has all the needful punch, and many of the arguments are just as applicable today as they were a half-century ago. Take the handbill copy illustrated. It was done in three colors, and the argument was new and most convincing. The reverse side copy is also extremely effective. Note the expert-roaster argument and coffee-making directions; some of these may still be found in current coffee advertising.

Most of the original Arbuckle advertising was by means of circulars or broadsides, although some newspaper space was employed. Premiums were first used by John Arbuckle as an advertising sales adjunct, and they proved a big factor in putting Ariosa on the map. Mr. Arbuckle created the kind of word-of-mouth publicity for his goods that is the most difficult achievement in the business of advertising. It caused so deep and lasting an impression, that in some sections it has persisted through at least five decades. The advertising moral is: Get people to talk your brand.

Since the death of its founder, the Arbuckle copy has been changed to fit modern conditions. That it has kept pace with all the forward movements in business and advertising is evident from the specimens which help to illustrate this chapter. A significant change is to be noted in the fact that, for the first time in its history, "the greatest coffee business in the world" has adopted a policy of advertising to the trade as well as to the consumer, thus giving its publicity a well rounded character which it formerly lacked.

The evolution of other notable package coffees is also shown by illustration. Several concerns blazed new trails that have since been picked up and followed by competing brands.

Among the many long-established advertised package-coffee successes may be mentioned:

Arbuckle's Yuban and Ariosa; McLaughlin's XXXX; Chase & Sanborn's Seal Brand; Dwinell-Wright's White House; Weir's Red Ribbon; B. Fischer & Company's Hotel Astor; Brownell & Field's Autocrat; Bour's Old Master; Scull's Boscul; Seeman Brothers' White Rose; Blanke's Faust; Baker's Barrington Hall; Woolson Spice Company's Golden Sun; International Coffee Company's Old Homestead; Kroneberger's Old Reserve; Western Grocer Company's Chocolate Cream; Leggett's Nabob; Clossett & Dever's Golden West; R.C. Williams' Royal Scarlet; Merchants Coffee Company's Alameda; Widlar Company's C.W. brand; Meyer Bros.' Old Judge; Nash-Smith Tea and Coffee Company's Wedding Breakfast; J.A. Folger & Company's Golden Gate; Ennis Hanley Blackburn Coffee Company's Golden Wedding; M.J. Brandenstein & Company's M.J.B.; Hills Brothers' Red Can, the Young & Griffin Coffee Company's Franco-American, and the Cheek-Neal Coffee Company's Maxwell House.

It was estimated that the amount of money spent by the larger coffee roasters upon all forms of publicity in the United States in 1920 was about $3,000,000.

Charts prepared by Charles Coolidge Parlin of the division of commercial research of the Curtis Publishing Company, and checked by the Publishers' Information Bureau, show the advertising for coffee and for coffee substitutes in thirty leading publications from 1911 to 1920; and compare the advertising for coffee and coffee substitutes in 1920 with a chart of per capita consumption. It should be noted that the figures exclude all other forms of advertising, such as newspapers, bill-posting, street-car signs, electric signs, and so forth.

Experience has proven that a package coffee, to be successful, must have back of it expert knowledge on buying, blending, roasting, and packing, as well as an efficient sales force. These things are essential: (1) a quality product; (2) a good trade-mark name and label; (3) an efficient package. With these, an intelligently planned and carefully executed advertising and sales campaign will spell success. Such a campaign comprehends advertising directed to the dealer and to the consumer. It may include all the approved forms of publicity, such as newspapers, magazines, billboards, electric signs, motion pictures, demonstrations, and samples. One phase of trade advertising which should not be overlooked is dealer helps. The extent to which the roaster-packer, or the promoter of a new package coffee, should utilize the various advertising media or go into dealer helps must, of course, depend upon the size of the advertising appropriation.

Many roaster-packers supply grocers handling their coffee with dealer helps in the shape of weather-proof metal signs for outside display, display racks, store and window display signs, cut-outs, blotters, consumer booklets, newspaper electros, stereopticon slides, moving pictures, demonstrations, samples, etc. Dealer selling schemes based on points have also been found helpful in promoting sales.

Advertising to the Trade

Until a comparatively recent date, the green coffee importer, selling the roasting trade, has not realized the need of advertising. He has inclined to the belief that he did not need to advertise, because, in most instances, green coffee is not sold by the mark; and, to a certain extent, price has been the determining factor.

During late years, however, many green coffee firms have come to realize that there is a good-will element that enters into the equation which can be fostered by the intelligent use of advertising space in the coffee roaster's trade journal. Also, a few importers are now featuring trade marks in their advertising, thus building up a tangible trade-mark asset in addition to good will.

For a number of years the green coffee trade used the business card type of advertisement; but some are now utilizing a more up-to-date style of copy, as typified by the advertisements of Leon Israel & Brothers and W.R. Grace & Company. Specimens of other green coffee advertising of the better kind are here reproduced.

Advertising campaigns in behalf of package coffees can not be fully effective without the proper use of trade publications. Advertising in the dealer's paper has many advantages. It is good missionary work for the salesman. It creates confidence in the mind of the dealer. It is an excellent means for demonstrating to the retailer that he is being considered in the scheme of distribution—that no attempt is being made to force the goods upon him through consumer advertising alone. Trade-paper advertising also offers the packer the opportunity to acquaint the dealer with the selling points in favor of the brand advertised, thus saving the time of the salesman. An increasing number of coffee packers are now using the advertising columns of trade papers, and some typical advertisements are reproduced herewith.

Advertising by Various Mediums

Billboard and other outdoor advertising, also car cards, are being used to a considerable extent for coffee publicity. Painted outdoor signs have been the back-bone of one middle-west roaster's campaign for a number of years. Both car cards and billboards are growing in popularity because they enable the coffee packer to reproduce his package in its natural colors and permit also of striking displays. Such firms as Arbuckle Brothers, New York; Dayton Spice Mills, Dayton, Ohio; W.F. MCLaughlin & Company, Chicago; the Puhl-Webb Company, Chicago; the Bour Company, Toledo; B. Fischer & Company, New York; and the Cheek-Neal Coffee Company, Nashville and New York, are consistent users of this character of advertising. Electric signs also have proved effective for coffee advertising. Reproductions of some characteristic outdoor and car-card advertisements are to be found in these pages.

Motion pictures are a comparatively new development in coffee advertising. One of the first coffee roasters to adopt this plan of publicity was S.H. Holstad & Company, Minneapolis. The film used depicted the cultivation and preparation of coffee for the market, also the complete roasting and packaging operations. The A.J. Deer Company, manufacturers of coffee mills and roasters, Hornell, N.Y., was another pioneer in the use of coffee films. Jabez Burns & Sons, coffee-machinery manufacturers, followed with an educational coffee picture. The National Packaging Machinery Company, of Boston, is another concern that has utilized films for advertising purposes, showing its machines in operation in a coffee-packing plant. Many roasters made use of the coffee film produced by the Joint Coffee Trade Publicity Committee.

In using advertising films, it is customary for the roaster to arrange for a showing at one or more theaters. The advertising in the local papers features the coffee brands, also the name of the local dealer, the latter being furnished with tickets which he distributes among his retail customers. There are several concerns making a business of supplying commercial films and of getting distribution for them.

Another form of theater publicity is that of the advertising slide—stereopticon views thrown upon the screen between feature pictures. Many packers find these are effective for cultivating the dealer, it being customary to show the brand name, together with that of the local distributer.

Advertising for Retailers

When retailers analyze the people to whom they sell coffee, they usually find three types. First, there is the woman who thinks she is an expert judge of coffee, but who is unable to find anything to suit her cultivated taste. Then there is the new housewife, possibly a bride of a few months, who knows very little about coffee, but wants to find a good blend that both she and her husband will like. The third is the most acceptable class, the satisfied people who have found coffee that delights them, day after day.

W. Harry Longe, a Texas retailer, has prepared the following "ready made" copy appeals for the three classes. To "Mrs. Know-it-all-about-Coffee," this style has been found effective:

For the good lady who is anxious to find a suitable blend of coffee, and who desires information, this is a good appeal:

Taking both classes and dealing with them alike:

The satisfied class, of course, is not averse to making a change, and it is well, occasionally, for the dealer to let his own satisfied customers know he still believes in his goods. The argument might take this form:

Again, possible new customers may listen to this appeal: