59 lines
2.8 KiB
Plaintext
59 lines
2.8 KiB
Plaintext
From: wvhorn@magnus.acs.ohio-state.edu (William VanHorne)
|
|
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.urban
|
|
Subject: Re: Proctor & Gamble Satanists??
|
|
Date: 27 Jan 1994 13:43:28 GMT
|
|
|
|
[ much about P&Gs "satanic" moon-and-stars symbol deleted ]
|
|
|
|
BTW, if you are curious about the *real* origin of the Procter & Gamble
|
|
symbol that caused such a fuss, the book "Corporate Cultures" has the whole
|
|
story.
|
|
|
|
Oh. You don't want to go look-up the book? You're too busy and important
|
|
to waste your time on such trivia? Since I'm not busy or important, you want
|
|
me to waste my time giving you a synopsis?
|
|
|
|
Sure. Happy to.
|
|
|
|
Back in the 1800s, P&G was famous for its candles rather than its soap, and
|
|
they would ship their candles down the Ohio-Mississippi rivers to New
|
|
Orleans, where jobbers would unload the river barges and ship the P&G
|
|
candles worldwide. As part of the shipping process, the loading docks
|
|
back in Cincinnnati had whole bunches of crate makers who would build the
|
|
shipping crates right on the spot, by hand, and tailored to the size of
|
|
the shipment, size of the ship, etc. Anyways, the crate makers were
|
|
proud of their work, and invented their own marks that they would carve
|
|
or burn into the crate they had just built.
|
|
|
|
So, everything works fine, and some of the crate makers get real fancy
|
|
and artistic with their marks, until one of the Big Bosses (I think it
|
|
was Procter, but I forget) comes down to oversee a shipment, sees his
|
|
crates covered by these here marks, throws a fit, orders the crate makers
|
|
to stop with the .sigs already, and storms off. Sos anyway the P&G
|
|
shipments go down river without the crate makers' marks on 'em and when
|
|
the shipments hit New Orleans, the jobbers refuse to accept them, and
|
|
a couple of shipments have to be hauled all the way back to Cincinnati
|
|
before the home office can react to the situation.
|
|
|
|
It seems that the middlemen in Louisiana relied on the fact that *real*
|
|
P&G merchandise would be shipped in crates marked by the crate makers,
|
|
and got to know the personal marks they would use, and so used those
|
|
marks to tell the difference between real P&G stuff, and phony cheap
|
|
replacements. Once P&G heard about the problem, they decided to allow
|
|
the crate makers to mark their work, but wanted them to choose just
|
|
one symbol that everybody would use. A contest was held, and the
|
|
man-in-the-moon-with-stars symbol used by one guy was chosen the winner,
|
|
and from that day all P&G shipping crates carried the m.i.t.m.w.s. mark.
|
|
|
|
Over the years the crate maker's mark got added to all of P&Gs packaging
|
|
and became an internationally famous trademark recognized worldwide, until
|
|
the 1970s/1980s when P&G was forced to change the symbol due to a rapid
|
|
rise in the population of the chronically brain-dead.
|
|
|
|
And no one lived happily ever after except the wolf.
|
|
|
|
---Bill "and the storyteller" VanHorne
|
|
|
|
|
|
|