Marketing Gum, Making Meanings: Wrigley in North America, 1890-1930

This essay is a business and cultural history of Wrigley marketingin North America from the 1890s until the early 1930s. Wrigleyrelied on wholesalers at a time when consumer goods makers wereexpanding their sales forces. A prolific advertiser, Wrigleyprovided favorable terms to retailers carrying chewing gum,countering the view that advertising, by enabling direct communicationbetween manufacturer and consumer, diminished retailer cloutin the chain of distribution. Wrigley advertising constructedmeanings on multiple levels, discussed here with the theoreticaltools of liminality and semiotics. The text of Wrigley ads championedrelief for two modern conditions: indigestion and stress. Theimagery, mainly that of the liminal "Spearman," evoked notionsof unworldly escape and infantile nostalgia. The ads were richlypolysemic. Accordingly, Wrigley's widespread popularity andmarket dominance by 1930 should be assessed in terms of bothmarketing function and representational process.