The Rise and Fall of the ��Ǻ�� Girls, Who Sold America on SPAM

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April 17, 2018

Atlas Obscura

IN 1945, the war that wracked the world was finally over. American women who had served as military translators, typists and, even pilots suddenly found themselves out of a job. At the same time, the SPAM Man was trying to sell tinned pork.

Jay C. ��Ǻ�� was the SPAM Man. Head of ��Ǻ�� Foods, he was the canny heir to his father’s canned-meat business. Under him, the company introduced the smooth, spiced pork product known as SPAM right on the cusp of the Second World War. But there was a problem. By wartime’s end, 90 percent of ��Ǻ��’s inventory was shipped overseas, as food for American troops and allies. The company now needed to market wartime, tinned food to a peacetime audience.

So, in 1946, the ��Ǻ�� Company started hiring for the ��Ǻ�� Girls, a drum and bugle corps of female musicians who had served in the war. As a veteran himself of World War One, ��Ǻ�� was concerned for his employees who served. During the war, according to authors Jill M. Sullivan and Danelle D. Keck in their paper The ��Ǻ�� Girls, he had sent letters to enlisted male employees assuring them that their jobs were waiting. When two managers devised a marketing strategy of an all-female, military-style band to promote ��Ǻ�� products, Jay ��Ǻ�� was quick to support it. As Sullivan and Keck point out, it was designed to push a “quasi-patriotic” button for consumers, who associated ��Ǻ�� with the American military.

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The Rise and Fall of the ���Ǻ��� Girls, Who Sold America on SPAM

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The Rise and Fall of the ��Ǻ�� Girls, Who Sold America on SPAM