Julia Press Mar 11, 2020
For lots of people in the US, Spam is a bit of a punchline.
David McNew/Getty Images
During World War II, many US troops got sick of the canned lunch meats in their rations. Hormel went to great lengths to distance Spam from that association.
During World War II, many US troops got sick of the canned lunch meats in their rations. Hormel went to great lengths to distance Spam from that association.
But over the years, as Spam has become the punchline to other jokes, Hormel has begun to embrace the joke
For a lot of people in the continental US, Spam is often thought of as a joke. It makes cameos in the Washington Post's TikTok videos. It's the punchline of a famous Monty Python skit and its Broadway musical spinoff, "Spamalot," which was sponsored by Hormel, the company that produces Spam.
But Hormel didn't always lean in to this reputation. In fact, for a long time, it tried its hardest to sell Spam as a strictly serious food.
When Spam first launched, that strategy worked. It was advertised in popular magazines and on radio shows, and within the first three years of its launch, 70% of urban Americans had given it a try.
But when the US entered World War II in 1941, that would all change. Spam and other canned meats like it were the perfect choice for the military to add to soldiers' rations. By the time the war ended, the army had received 150 million pounds of canned pork, and some soldiers said they were fed it up to three times a day.
"You got so tired of Spam," Raul Baca Martinez recalled in an oral history for the University of Texas at Austin. He remembered people trying to feed Spam to a dog, who'd just spit it out. "Even the dog didn't want any more Spam!"
In fact, the canned ham they were eating might not have been Spam at all. A lot of the canned meat that went into war rations was a government-specified recipe — some of it was made by Hormel, the same company that sold Spam, but according to Carolyn Wyman, author of "Spam: A Biography," that doesn't mean it was the same product.
"It was more heavily spiced, it didn't have any ham in it, it was a little bit cheaper," Wyman told Business Insider's "Brought to you by…" podcast. "It had to withstand the heat of the Philippines and the cold of Ireland."
But Spam had been a household name before the war, and soldiers didn't distinguish between one canned, precooked meat and another. It was all Spam to them, so Spam took the heat for all their canned meat frustrations.
"They called it a meatloaf without basic training, ham that didn't pass its physical, and the real reason war was hell," Wyman said. "In a way, it was like comic relief for a lot of people."
This posed a problem for Jay Hormel, who'd taken over his father's company.
"He worried that Spam was going to be a casualty of the war," Wyman said. "It became this huge public relations nightmare."
So Hormel hatched an idea: he'd form a musical group of 60 female World War II veterans, and he'd call them "The Hormel Girls." The group traveled the country in 35 white Chevys, performing in competitions and marching in parades while selling Hormel products door-to-door.
Across the country in 1949, newspapers advertised the arrival of
The Hormel Girls. Wilkes-Barre Record
They even got their own radio show. It ranked 4th in Nielsen's yearly ratings in 1953.
"It was like a program-length commercial," Wyman said. "They had ads in it, but then the skits and things that happened in between the ads also talked about Hormel products."
By the time The Hormel Girls sang their last song, they'd done a great deal to boost Spam's image. In fact, the product fit right in to the growing processed food industry that was catering to women who'd entered the workforce during the war.
"By the fifties and sixties, it was really, not just acceptable, but it was considered what you should do, to use these convenience products," said Wyman. "They were like products of technology."
Transcending its reputation
But in the 1970s, a Monty Python skit threw a wrench in Hormel's plans, making Spam the punchline of jokes in England and much of the continental US again. For years after the skit aired, Hormel took the same approach as before: it used advertising to guide the food's reputation away from the kinds of jokes Monty Python was making.
According to Brain Olson, corporate communications manager at Hormel, "the focus had been on protecting the brand from similar competitive products and showcasing how Spam was an easy to prepare food with many uses."
The company even went so far as to sue The Muppets over a boar character named "Spa'am." But around this time in the mid '90s, Hormel started to embrace the food's reputation, for better or for worse.
"'Spamalot' is a great example of where Hormel Foods stopped being as concerned with product protection and fully embraced the deep cultural impact that had transcended the product itself," Olson wrote.
According to Wyman, this was a strategic move.
"It's one of the few food products that's probably as well known by people who don't eat it as by people who do," Wyman said. "It became so mainstream that it wasn't that threatening anymore."
Spam's popularity has only been growing. In fact, Hormel said 2019 brought Spam's fifth consecutive year of record sales. When predicting food and drink trends to come in 2020, a New York-based restaurant consulting firm expected to see more Spam on restaurant menus. And some of Spam's most popular markets are in places like Hawaii, Guam, Korea, and the Philippines, where Spam came with the military and was there to stay.
For the full story, listen to Business Insider's podcast, "Brought to you by…"
They even got their own radio show. It ranked 4th in Nielsen's yearly ratings in 1953.
"It was like a program-length commercial," Wyman said. "They had ads in it, but then the skits and things that happened in between the ads also talked about Hormel products."
By the time The Hormel Girls sang their last song, they'd done a great deal to boost Spam's image. In fact, the product fit right in to the growing processed food industry that was catering to women who'd entered the workforce during the war.
"By the fifties and sixties, it was really, not just acceptable, but it was considered what you should do, to use these convenience products," said Wyman. "They were like products of technology."
Transcending its reputation
But in the 1970s, a Monty Python skit threw a wrench in Hormel's plans, making Spam the punchline of jokes in England and much of the continental US again. For years after the skit aired, Hormel took the same approach as before: it used advertising to guide the food's reputation away from the kinds of jokes Monty Python was making.
According to Brain Olson, corporate communications manager at Hormel, "the focus had been on protecting the brand from similar competitive products and showcasing how Spam was an easy to prepare food with many uses."
The company even went so far as to sue The Muppets over a boar character named "Spa'am." But around this time in the mid '90s, Hormel started to embrace the food's reputation, for better or for worse.
"'Spamalot' is a great example of where Hormel Foods stopped being as concerned with product protection and fully embraced the deep cultural impact that had transcended the product itself," Olson wrote.
According to Wyman, this was a strategic move.
"It's one of the few food products that's probably as well known by people who don't eat it as by people who do," Wyman said. "It became so mainstream that it wasn't that threatening anymore."
Spam's popularity has only been growing. In fact, Hormel said 2019 brought Spam's fifth consecutive year of record sales. When predicting food and drink trends to come in 2020, a New York-based restaurant consulting firm expected to see more Spam on restaurant menus. And some of Spam's most popular markets are in places like Hawaii, Guam, Korea, and the Philippines, where Spam came with the military and was there to stay.
For the full story, listen to Business Insider's podcast, "Brought to you by…"
VIDEO
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IN MEAT PACKING BEGAN WITH HORMEL.
by J Zacharakis-Jutz - 1994
Hard-Pressed in the Heartland: The Hormel Strike and the Future of the. Labor Movement, by Peter Rachleff. Boston: South End Press, 1993. 135 pp. Appendix
Globalization and Union Democracy A Comparison of the Hormel Strike of 1985-1986 (USA)
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Nov 18, 2019 - Hard-Pressed in the Heartland: The Hormel Strike and the Future of the Labor Movement, by Peter Rachleff. MNHS call number: HD 5325 .
... The Hormel Strike and the Future of the Labor Movement: Peter Rachleff: ... emotional and divisive meatpackers' local P-9 strike against Hormel in Austin, ...
Local P-9 of the United Food and Commercial Workers Union (UFCW), made up of ... ("The Safety Issue in the Hormel Strike," Pete Rachleff, Labor Notes #88.).
The Legacy of the Hormel Strike, Fifteen Years Later. By Peter Rachleff ... Food and Commercial Workers (UFCW) Local P-9 at the Austin, Minnesota, Hormel ...
Aug 17, 2010 - P-9 strikers form a picket line outside Hormel during the 1985 strike. ... Peter Rachleff, a history professor and labor historian at Macalester ...
Jul 11, 2015 - Strikes P-9 Picketer is Larry Clark ORG XMIT: MIN2015070919364370 ... historian Peter Rachleff, who wrote "Hard-Pressed in the Heartland.".
Peter Rachleff. DOI: 10.2307/j.ctv6mtdg6.2. From the late summer of 1985 into the early spring of 1986, the small town of Austin, Minnesota, figured prominently
Posted Aug 21, 2010 by Peter Rachleff ... and Commercial Workers Local P-9, struck the flagship plant of George A. Hormel and Company in Austin, Minnesota.
Peter Rachleff No. 9 ... The high point of the struggle was a 10-month strike by Local P-9 of the United Food and Commercial Workers (UFCW). ... For more than a year after the strike, these activists continued to promote a boycott of Hormel ...
Jan 29, 2004 - Almost 20 years after a strike at the Hormel meatpacking plant divided the town ... Members of Local P-9 were protesting shrinking wages and plant safety problems. ... The legacy of the Hormel strike, by Peter Rachleff (2000
Jul 12, 2013 - Download as PDF, TXT or read online from Scribd ... But when it is a question of making a precise study of strikes, combinations and ... But the Austin workers local, P9, signalled its opposition by electing a new leadership ... 1 Peter Rachleff
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