Sure to Attract Much Attention: The Advertising Genius of Milton S. Hershey

“Three Friends,” circa 1900, a point-of-sale advertising poster for Hershey’s Milk Chocolate and Hershey’s Cocoa, utilized the stylized COCOA concentric circles logo on the sweater of the young girl.
Courtesy of Hershey Community Archives, Hershey, PA

Milton S. Hershey, the man behind the chocolate bar, was an innovative and resourceful manufacturer who used a variety of traditional as well as unconventional strategies to both advertise and attract attention to his products.

He was born in Derry Township, Dauphin County, on September 13, 1857. After spending the first eight years of his life in Dauphin County, he lived 10 years in Lancaster County, six of them on a modest 44-acre family farm in Bart Township and the next four in the city of Lancaster with his mother while working as a candymaking apprentice with confectioner Joseph Royer. At Royer’s Ice Cream Parlor and Garden, Milton not only learned how to make candy but also how to run a business and attract customers.

At the completion of his apprenticeship with Royer in 1876, Hershey established his first candymaking business in Philadelphia. After failing there and in several other cities, he returned to Lancaster in 1886. That same year, he began his first successful business, the Lancaster Caramel Co., and in 1894 he founded the Hershey Chocolate Co.

In 1900 Hershey sold his caramel business for $1 million to the American Caramel Co. to focus solely on the manufacture of chocolate and cocoa. In 1905 he opened what would eventually become the largest chocolate factory in the world near his place of birth in the newly established model company town of Hershey, where he would live until his death on October 13, 1945, at the age of 88.

In Lancaster in the 1890s, conventional advertisements in national trade publications such as the Confectioners Journal or in flyers targeted to more local audiences promoted products with fanciful names and wrappers that emulated the finest European boutique-style chocolates of the day. At a time when chocolate was still considered to be a luxury item, Hershey purposely chose names for his mass-produced sweet chocolate novelties that suggested a wealthy or select image. Golf Wafers summoned visions of a country-club lifestyle and leisure activity, Vassar Gems appealed to women and were packaged in boxes decorated with flowers and feminine colors, and Le Roi de Chocolate (The King of Chocolate) indicated a product destined for only the most discerning of consumers.

Vassar Gems, LeRoi de Chocolate Tablets, and Golf Wafers all featured boutique-style packaging, 1895–98. Hershey chocolate products in this period were sweet chocolate novelties, often flavored with vanilla. In an attempt to appeal to the female market, Vassar Gems was named for the well-known women’s school.
Courtesy of Hershey Community Archives, Hershey, PA

Beginning in Lancaster and continuing throughout his life, Hershey used a variety of trademarks, slogans and promotions to create and sustain a local, regional and even national demand for his chocolate and cocoa products. In 1898, for example, Hershey adopted the distinctive baby-in-the-bean trademark that was not fully retired by the company until 1968. Over the years, this trademark underwent many subtle changes — the raised arm of the baby sometimes holding a simple cup of cocoa, a steaming cup of cocoa, or an unwrapped chocolate bar.

Adopted by Hershey in 1898, the baby-in-the-bean logo reminded consumers of the natural qualities of cocoa and chocolate, as well as its exotic origins. The cocoa bean—the chief ingredient of chocolate—can only be grown in humid tropical climates with regular rains and a short dry season in an area extending approximately 20 degrees on either side of the equator.
Courtesy of Hershey Community Archives, Hershey, PA

When introduced in 1900 Hershey’s milk chocolate was promoted as a healthful, wholesome treat. Advertising illustrations often used cows and fields and the slogan “Made on the Farm” to highlight milk chocolate’s ties to fresh milk and country pastures. Another popular though short-lived trademark was the use of a series of stylized concentric letters with “A” in the center to spell the word “Cocoa.” The familiar block lettering still used today came into being in 1928, when the company was first publicly traded.

“A Meal in Itself,” the slogan on this advertising poster, 1920–24, promoted the nutritional value of chocolate.
Courtesy of Hershey Community Archives, Hershey, PA

From the very start, Hershey relied on a variety of advertising slogans to get his point across to consumers. While in Lancaster, Hershey’s packaging employed traditional advertising slogans like “Pure Delicious and Nutritious,” “Warranted Absolutely Pure,” and “Superior Quality and Excellency of Flavor.” Within a short time, these more-or-less conventional slogans were joined by other uniquely applied Hershey jingles, such as “A Meal In Itself” and “More Sustaining Than Meat,” designed to tout the virtues of chocolate as part of a healthy diet. The slogan “A Sweet to Eat, A Food to Drink” neatly summed up the perceived nutritional qualities of both chocolate and cocoa. As the product line continued to expand, the slogans “First in Favor and Flavor” and “The Genuine Bears This Signature — M.S. Hershey” capitalized on the growing Hershey reputation for quality chocolate and confectionary products.

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With the success of the Lancaster Caramel Co., Hershey was also able to put into practice some of the promotional strategies he learned as a young apprentice at Royer’s. According to the 1903 Biographical Annals of Lancaster County, Royer was the first merchant in Lancaster to use a plate glass front on his store and to put his name on his delivery wagon. This same publication also credits Royer with being the first man in the city and one of the first in the state to make an ice cream soda, advertising it as early as 1868. Building upon Royer’s idea of putting his name on his delivery wagon to help advertise his product, Hershey purchased what is considered to be Lancaster’s first automobile — and an electric one at that — in February 1900 from the Riker Electric Vehicle Co. of Elizabethport, New Jersey, and emblazoned it with “Hershey’s Cocoa” on each side. The use of a motorized delivery wagon to both advertise and deliver his product proved to be a stroke of genius, attracting crowds and much attention wherever it went. Despite introducing the automobile to the citizenry of Lancaster, Hershey’s effort only merited a brief, one-paragraph article inconspicuously placed on page 5 of the Lancaster New Era. Simply entitled “Lancaster’s First Automobile,” it appeared in print on February 13, 1900, and read in part, “The Hershey Chocolate Company will have the distinction of having introduced the automobile into Lancaster, and for business purposes, too. . . . It will be quite a novelty to see an automobile on our streets and will be sure to attract much attention.”

The Riker Electric automobile was used to deliver and promote Hershey products in Lancaster.
Milton Hershey School

Hershey decided to purchase his Riker Electric after seeing it on the floor of the New York Automobile Show. Contemporary reports noted that the delivery wagon came equipped with electric lights, an electric bell, a brass “steering apparatus,” and brakes. These same reports also recorded that the vehicle weighed 3,500 pounds and could haul a load of about 2,000 pounds. The vehicle’s power source consisted of four storage batteries (each weighing 300 pounds) with sufficient power to carry the machine 30 miles at a top speed of 9 miles per hour. The delivery wagon also proved to be a profitable investment for its manufacturer; it was awarded a $1,500 prize at the Auto Show and was purchased by Hershey for $2,000. Getting the most out of his purchase, Hershey saw to it that the vehicle, with a crew of salesmen under F. W. Delori, soon set off on a tour of Pennsylvania cities. The “operator,” R. C. Ornsdorff of Baltimore was once quoted in the Reading Eagle as saying, “I have not had a single accident as the carriage is easily handled if the operator decides to keep cool.”

Hershey’s innovative advertising and promotional efforts while in Lancaster did not end with the purchase of the Riker Electric delivery vehicle. Much like Royer’s Ice Cream Parlor and Garden, the Hershey Chocolate Co. Soda Fountain and Candy Store at 1020 Chestnut Street in Philadelphia offered Hershey the opportunity to both advertise his product and attract customers to his place of business. In existence between 1901 and 1904, the Philadelphia store offered a triumphant return of Hershey to the city where his first business had failed.

The L. Straus & Sons Electrolabrum was showcased in the Hershey Chocolate Company Store in Philadelphia, 1901–04.
Milton Hershey School

Under the capable supervision of William Brinker, one of Hershey’s Lancaster employees, the Philadelphia store provided customers with a large and airy showroom where they could purchase Hershey products and enjoy a refreshing beverage or ice cream soda. To entice visitors to his store and to convince them of the quality of his product, Hershey also included an exhibit of chocolate-making equipment.

Perhaps the most spectacular attraction at Hershey’s Philadelphia showroom was a one-of-a-kind magnificent cut-glass torchère originally produced for the 1893 World’s Columbian Exposition in Chicago by L. Straus & Sons of New York. With nearly 1,400 separate pieces, the torchère was at the time the largest composite article in cut glass ever produced. So incredible was the dazzling effect of the piece that the Straus company actually coined the name “Electrolabrum,” a contraction of “electric” and “candelabrum,” for their free-standing torchère (see Curator’s Choice, Fall 2002).

Milton Hershey received a patent for this machine for cutting candy in 1895.
U.S. Patent Office

When the exposition closed, Straus carefully disassembled the torchère and moved it to their Warren Street showroom in Manhattan. There Straus proudly displayed the distinctive showpiece until May 1901, when Hershey purchased it for the then princely sum of $5,000 and removed it to Philadelphia. With the closing of Hershey’s Philadelphia shop in 1904, the torchère was moved to the town of Hershey, where the cut-glass marvel became the centerpiece of the entrance rotunda of Hershey’s High Point mansion in 1908. Today, the Straus Electrolabrum is on exhibit in The Hershey Story, a museum dedicated to sharing the history of Milton Hershey, his town, the chocolate company, and the various commercial enterprises and philanthropies that bear his name. No longer seen as a simple promotional tool, the torchère is now an important example of late-19th-century commercial decorative art, a landmark in the history of glassmaking, and a significant visual reminder of the advertising genius of Hershey.

Hershey’s experiences also taught him that to turn a profit he needed more than a quality product and a creative way to advertise and promote that product; he needed to be efficient. Although he never attended college or trade school, Hershey had an inquisitive mind and hands-on approach to business that gave him more than a working knowledge of the manufacturing process. On January 15, 1895, he received patent number 532,554 for a new and improved “Machine for Cutting Candy.” According to the patent application filed on May 3, 1893, “this invention relates to improvements in that class of devices used for cutting candy, caramels and similar products; and the object of the invention is to sub-divide sheets of the product into parts suitable for use.”

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Building upon his successes in Lancaster, Hershey continued to pursue creative and innovative advertising opportunities after relocating to the new model company town of Hershey in 1905. Seeking to take advantage of the public interest in collecting and sending postcards, he inserted actual photo postcards into his chocolate bars between 1909 and 1918. These cards advertised the fresh wholesome ingredients of chocolate, the sanitary nature of the chocolate-making process, and the beauty of the model town of Hershey.

The early 1900s saw a surge of popularity in mailing and collecting postcards. Many individuals used postcards as a convenient method to send short messages to friends and relatives. Postcards were collected right from the start and were often placed in albums for safekeeping. Real photo or picture postcards, photographs with a postcard backing, were especially popular during the period known as the Golden Age of Postcards, roughly 1898–1919. The Hershey Chocolate Co. took advantage of the popularity of postcards by designing and printing a series of 1-cent real photo and general postcards designed to be included in each 5-cent milk chocolate and almond milk chocolate bar as an effective means of attracting attention to both their product as well as the town of Hershey. Hershey produced these specially sized “bar cards” (so called because they mimicked the size of a candy bar, only measuring 5½ by 2¾ inches) between 1909 and 1918.

Collectible picture cards, packaged with Hershey bars, touted wholesome milk used in the chocolate, the sanitary nature of the manufacturing process, and the beauty of the model community of Hershey and its environs.
Courtesy of Hershey Community Archives, Hershey, PA

The idea of the bar card most likely came from standard-image colorful lithographed collector cards used by tobacco companies in the late 19th century. Hershey himself used these generic cards in Lancaster to promote the sales of his new milk chocolate line in 1900. In Hershey, real photo bar cards were printed locally by the Hershey Press. The press produced all the labels and packaging materials for the chocolate company and the local weekly newspaper also known as the Hershey Press. In one year alone, the Hershey Press reported that 75 million bar cards had been printed and enclosed with Hershey chocolate bars.

Hershey’s sophisticated printing equipment made it extremely cost effective to print large numbers of cards (sometimes referred to as “little billboards” in company literature), and Hershey also found the U.S. Postal Service to be a useful tool in reaching consumers. When mailed to friends and relatives, the postcards provided an inexpensive and effective means of promoting Hershey products by individual consumers happy to pay the 1 cent in postage in return for a “free” card.

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A circa 1915 documentary film, produced by Leggett-Gruen Corp. about Hershey manufacturing, was distributed to schools and community groups. This screen shot shows the conche machines used in the chocolate-making process.
Milton Hershey School

Always fascinated with emerging technologies and new ways of reaching people, Hershey also employed professional filmmakers at an early date to promote his town and products to the public. In the early 1910s Leggett-Gruen Corp., a motion picture production and distribution company based in New York, produced a series of silent short films depicting Hershey’s manufacturing process from milk production on model dairy farms through the processing, packaging and promotion of the final product. Around the same time, Leggett-Gruen produced a separate short film highlighting aspects of the town of Hershey, including panoramic and street-level views, images of Hershey Park and Hershey Zoo, and scenes of students at the Hershey Industrial School participating in a variety of activities, from farming to participating in a fire drill.

Long-forgotten relics of a bygone era, the films produced by Leggett-Gruen remained undisturbed in the archives of Milton Hershey School until recently unearthed by staff conducting a routine inventory of the school archives. Unable to view the films in their original 28-mm format, the school utilized the services of an outside vendor to convert each film into a separate digital file, literally providing a sense of realism and motion to an era previously depicted only by photographs and prose. Because of their age and content, these films are an important piece of cinematic and Hershey history.

Hershey made sure that films produced by Leggett-Gruen were shown around the country to students in high schools and colleges as well as interested community organizations. The earliest documented showing of these films occurred on February 24, 1915, when D.C. Lightner of the Hershey company included them as part of a presentation to students at the Columbia University School of Journalism. According to an article that appeared in the Columbia Daily Spectator, the weekly student newspaper, “the films showed the Hershey model village . . . and gave views of the life of the workingmen there. There were also films showing the production of the milk chocolate.”

Hershey also distributed films about the town of Hershey. This screen shots shows a downtown street scene.
Milton Hershey School

Advertised as “illustrated lectures,” showings were routinely accompanied by a presentation from a Hershey employee, including D.C. Lightner as well as G. Chance Phillips, later export and merchandise manager for Hershey. The Leggett Gruen films produced for Hershey appeared in the early and short-lived 28-mm format used exclusively by the Pathéscope company in America from 1913 until about 1920. The introduction of new film formats, especially 16-mm in 1923, meant the demise of the 28-mm format and the equipment needed to view them.

Although these early efforts were eventually thwarted by changing technology, shortages brought on by World War I, and losses suffered by Hershey in the postwar collapse of the international sugar market, Hershey never abandoned the idea of using film as a promotional tool. In 1927 Wings, the first film to ever win the Academy Award for Best Picture, featured a poignant scene starring Gary Cooper enjoying a Hershey’s milk chocolate bar. In Cooper’s emotional (but short) screen debut, he shares a Hershey’s milk chocolate bar with two fellow pilots. Later, after having perished in a plane crash, his buddies find the partially eaten chocolate bar among his personal belongings. The scene is generally considered to be only the second time a product is so prominently featured in a motion picture, the first being the Roscoe “Fatty” Arbuckle film The Garage that used the setting and the charisma of its star to advertise Red Crown Gasoline. The star power of Fatty sold both the film and the product to the audience, establishing a relationship between celebrities and advertisers that remains to this day. Wings was not only an award winner but also one of the highest-grossing films of the decade (it remained in theaters for nearly two years), allowing Hershey to draw attention to his product by advertising to every person who saw the film.

Milton S. Hershey, 1905.
Milton Hershey School

The release of The Jazz Singer in October 1927 proved that feature-length movies with recorded sound were both possible and popular. Seeing the possibilities in using sound film to help promote the town and company, Hershey partnered with W.H. Hoedt Productions of Philadelphia in 1932 to release The Gift of Montezuma, a 48-minute educational film shown primarily in schools that described the town and the chocolate-making process. In 1934 Hershey employed Don Malkames, a well-known cinematographer who had worked on The Gift of Montezuma, to produce Seeing Wonders with narrator Lowell Thomas. Like the earlier Leggett-Gruen films, Hershey intended Seeing Wonders to be a “short” designed to promote Hershey as a travel destination. Chocolatetown Review, another short, featured Hershey Chocolate products as marionettes in a vaudeville-style show. Both of these films would have been shown in public theaters before the viewing of a feature film.

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World War II and the death of Milton Hershey ended this chapter of Hershey employing motion pictures as an advertising medium; however, inspired by the creativity of its founder, the Hershey Co. continues to employ advertising and promotional strategies sure to attract much attention. Although Hershey would turn to promoting its products through television rather than film beginning with a series of television commercials in 1970, Hershey famously reentered the product placement field with the release of E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial in 1982. In that film, Hershey’s Reese’s Pieces are used by a 10-year-old boy named Elliott to entice E.T. from hiding in the family’s tool shed. Like Wings 50 years earlier, E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial once again placed Hershey firmly in the minds of consumers and, in this case, the hearts of children around the world.

Further Reading

Brenner, Joël Glenn. Emperors of Chocolate: Inside the Secret World of Hershey and Mars. New York: Random House, 1999. / D’Antonio, Michael D. Hershey: Milton S. Hershey’s Extraordinary Life of Wealth, Empire, and Utopian Dreams. New York: Simon & Schuster, 2006. / Houts, Mary Davidoff, and Pamela Cassidy Whitenack. Hershey. Mount Pleasant, SC: Arcadia, 2000. / McMahon Jr., James D. Built on Chocolate: The Story of the Hershey Chocolate Company. Revised ed. Los Angeles: General Publishing Group, 2005. / —. Hershey: Then and Now. Charlestown, SC: Arcadia, 2015.

James D. McMahon Jr., Ph.D., received his doctorate in American studies from Penn State Harrisburg in 2015 and is currently a project archivist for LancasterHistory. He has served as site administrator for Landis Valley Village & Farm Museum, director for the Milton Hershey School Heritage Center, and curator and director for the Hershey Museum. His publications include numerous articles and three books on Hershey.