Duncan Hines

by Louis Hatchett

  In 1937 Park took “a six-month leave of absence to travel over much of the country on an assignment out of Washington as a special assistant to do area surveys and publicity for the recently formed Rural Electrification Administration [REA], studying farm problems and rural electrification.”507 While with the REA, Park made the most of his publicity skills. Through newspaper supplements, he showed rural audiences the many ways in which electricity could benefit America’s farmers. “The supplements carried advertising by merchants offering farmers everything from electric water systems to toasters and electric stoves.”508

  In 1940 Park launched his first personally-owned periodical, Cooperative Digest, a journal that served farm cooperative executives and agricultural leaders. It eventually developed a paid circulation of 15,000. Twenty-five years later it was still the only publication of its kind.509 In 1942 Park began publishing a second magazine of which he was sole owner, Rural Electrification Digest510. “With the thought that hundreds of local electric co-ops would soon burgeon across the country, collectively spending hundreds of millions of dollars for supplies and equipment,” Park, “conceived the idea of a trade magazine,” that would have a local focus and would “meet the needs of these co-ops.” Rural Electrification Digest was later published as Co-Op Power,511 later it became Farm Power.512

  One day in 1940 he met Howard E. Babcock, who was not only the founder and general manager of the cooperative known as the Grange League Federation Exchange (GLF), “which operated in New York, Pennsylvania, New Jersey and bordering states,” he was also at the time Chairman of the Board of Trustees at Cornell University. Babcock was also a charter member of Cooperative Digest, who at one point attempted to buy into the magazine for the purpose of extending the publication’s coverage. Park resisted selling “him any stock in the journal, but told Babcock he could buy all the subscriptions he wanted.” And he did. Almost overnight circulation of Cooperative Digest jumped from 200 to nearly 4,000. Babcock admired Park’s business abilities. He made an unsuccessful bid to persuade him to move his family to Ithaca, New York, so that Cornell University could take advantage of his knowledge, business skills and organizational abilities. Park resisted but he left the door open a crack when he told Babcock that if he ever left North Carolina for Ithaca, it would be to run his own business. With this in mind, one day in March 1942 Babcock informed Park of an opportunity that forever changed the direction of his young friend’s life. He told Park of a small, twenty-year-old, four-man advertising agency in Ithaca, New York, that was for sale, of which the Grange League Federation was its principal account.513 He advised Park to buy it and move his family to Ithaca. When Park wavered, Babcock offered to lend him the necessary cash to buy the agency. Babcock’s hunch proved correct; Park could not resist. On 1 April 1942,514 Park journeyed to Ithaca, carefully investigated the advertising agency’s business potential, discovered it had billings guaranteed for a year, and quickly moved to Ithaca. He never looked back.515

  The business into which Park invested his money had the accurate but unimpressive name of Agricultural Advertising & Research. The agency did marketing research for its clients, primarily farmers. “With accounts billing about $2,000,000” annually, within four or five years he built his agency from an organization employing five people into one employing over 125. By 1944 his clients included “purchasing or retail cooperatives in Indiana, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Virginia, and North Carolina, and organizations like the Dairy League.” The company was involved with marketing “various products ranging from ice cream, milk, grape juice, tomato juice and canned and frozen vegetables.”516 Park had no trouble repaying Babcock his money.517

  Throughout the 1940s Park’s agency grew rapidly. Branch offices were established in New York City, Albany, Washington, D. C., Richmond, Virginia and Raleigh, North Carolina. “Farm cooperatives made up the bulk of his accounts. The company also did work for blue chip national advertisers.” For six years the business continued to grow. Then, according to Park, he made a mistake. He became involved in politics. In 1946 his firm handled the advertising as well as the public relations campaign for New York Republican Governor Thomas Dewey’s 1946 gubernatorial race. Two years later Dewey’s political machine hired him to get out the New York small-town and rural vote in his 1948 bid for the White House. After Dewey was defeated by Truman that November, Park vowed never again to get involved in politics. It was not Dewey’s loss that governed Park’s remark so much as it was that he almost lost all his agricultural clients.

  Many of his clients were upset with his political activities and after the 1948 election Park offered his GLF farm cooperative clients the opportunity to change agencies—and several did. Those who remained, however, did so because they had a vested interest in a long-range project Park had spent a lot of time developing for them. While trying to elect Dewey had slowed its evolution, the day after the election loss Park plunged into this project with renewed vigor. The origin of what he and the GLF members were contemplating dated to the days shortly after the war ended.518

  As far as agricultural prices were concerned, by 1945 farmers increasingly believed they were getting the short end of the stick. They bitterly complained about the countless regulations the Federal government had imposed on them. Although they acknowledged that Depression-era and wartime regulations had been necessary, they contended that an intrusive postwar government was now unnecessary because both ordeals were over, but no elected official seemed seriously interested in abolishing them. They complained to Park that before the war, “you could sell anything put in a can.” And make money on it. Now things were different. The Federal government was not only paying people NOT to plant crops, it was also engaged in a morass of other bewildering agricultural activities. His clients did not like the resulting mess. Their main bone of contention was that because of countless, confusing policies emanating from Washington, no market now existed for their perishable goods. The Grange League Federation (GLF) asked him if it was possible to set up a central selling organization that would enable them to successfully compete in the marketplace. Park listened carefully to his clients. After studying the problem, he told them that setting up a central selling organization would cost them $20,000,000. Not having that much money, and not willing to part with it even if they did, the GLF members sent him back to the proverbial drawing board to come up with another answer.519

  Over the next several months Park contemplated several potential solutions to their difficulty. If the problem was that the government was preventing his clients from receiving higher food prices, there was little he could do without a massive shift in public opinion in favor of them. He therefore shifted his inquiry to another question. What would make people want to pay higher food prices? What he learned disturbed him, but it provided him with his first building block toward resolving the conundrum. With the help of research laboratories at Cornell University and other facilities, he discovered that although most Americans found plenty to eat each day, their stomachs were “usually stuffed with the wrong kind of food,” so much so that it often made them ill. This finding ignited his curiosity and led him to focus on a phenomenon he saw daily: Americans never stopped complaining of their stomach ailments. He became convinced that this ever-recurring complaint, while obviously related to a poor diet, created among the public a general disrespect for food; average Americans did not particularly enjoy consuming their provisions. As a result, when a plate of food was set before them, instead of seeing something that caused their mouths to water, they saw an assortment of edible objects designed to fill an intestinal void; beyond that sentiment, food was neither appealing nor important; as far as they were concerned, food was just something to eat to enable them to get through the day.

  This observation led to another. In the past Park had frequently watched the behavior of housewives as they shopped at the grocery store. They purchased their groceries “in a grudging manner,” he observed; they made their purchases with “the kind of reluc
tance and price watching” they did not exercise when buying perfume or beauty products. This attitude toward food was why they routinely attempted to purchase their foodstuffs at the lowest possible price; the thought of paying a high price for good quality food never seemed to penetrate their minds. He was determined to discover a way to overcome this attitude. Transforming it would be an arduous challenge, he believed, but it was a challenge well worth the time if, in the end, his GLF clients could obtain better prices in the marketplace.

  The next building block toward a solution came some weeks later. At his own expense, Park “traveled to California and studied Sunkist’s glamour treatment of the orange.” Sunkist, he discovered, had overcome the suspicion barrier; no American housewife regarded a Sunkist orange as if it was just another scrap of food. Instead, housewives deemed a Sunkist orange as something fresh, something tasty, something well worth the price. In short, Sunkist had glamorized the orange. The food industry had done a good job in advertising its products but had done practically nothing to glamorize them. There was a critical difference. The answer to the GLF’s problem, he concluded, was one of marketing. If Sunkist could persuade the public to buy its oranges, he could also persuade them to buy GLF products. Only one question remained: How?520

  The use of national advertising to achieve this goal was out of the question. Advertising rates on a national scale were far too high to contemplate, especially since his clients were all small. There was no way they could afford to advertise nationally, even collectively. Park then gave some thought to moving his clients’ products to distant states by rail. The problem here, he discovered, was that freight rates, like advertising rates, were also prohibitively high. Devising a solution for his parsimonious clients remained a problematic headache, but he was sure he could come up with something. Then the third and final building block came into play.

  Sometime in mid-1948 Park suggested to the GLF members that they collectively purchase the Green Giant company, which was at that time in financial trouble; it had, he pointed out, a widely recognized brand name, which was exactly what they needed. He also suggested they look into collectively purchasing the ailing S. S. Pierce company, which also had a widely recognized name. No one warmed to his suggestions. The GLF members told him they wanted nothing to do with Green Giant or S. S. Pierce. As their talks progressed, Park and the GLF members decided to look into the possibility of franchising their own brand label instead of using one already established.521 The only way they could make such an enterprise succeed, Park told them, was to market their products with labels displaying a highly identifiable logo or trademark.522

  Since the GLF members were unable or unwilling to bankroll the purchase of the Green Giant or S. S. Pierce companies, what was needed was the creation of an easily recognized symbol that grocery store consumers would immediately recognize for its superior quality, and one that would entice them to effortlessly pay a higher than normal price. Park’s agricultural clients liked this idea and instructed him to find one. So long as the money involved in creating the logo did not threaten them financially, they were agreeable to whatever he might devise. Park now only had one problem. He needed a brand name, one that would move products, “something in which an overly cautious public could have trust and confidence.” He assigned his head of research, Robert Flannery, to create an idea or a name—or something!—to crystallize his concept. Over the next few weeks, Flannery and the firm’s employees considered several names, such as Irene Rich, Fanny Farmer and other popular appellations. They tested as many as 500 names.523 Nothing, however, seemed to have what they were looking for: a name that was both high in recognition and one that would instantly be accepted and trusted by the public. Park ordered Flannery to do more testing. He even asked his employees for suggestions. A couple of weeks later, Flannery strolled into Park’s office with the solution. He said: “Bring in Duncan Hines.”524

  When Flannery said those words, Park almost snapped his fingers. “Why didn’t he think of it before?” he chastised himself. He instinctively knew Duncan Hines was the name he was looking for, the name that would solve all the GLF’s problems.525 While conducting his surveys, Flannery discovered the name housewives most frequently associated with good, quality food was that of Duncan Hines. His surveys also turned up another interesting fact: Duncan Hines’s name was better known among all Americans than was President Truman’s Vice-President, Alben Barkley, who was from Kentucky. In fact, more Kentuckians recognized Hines’s name than they did Barkley’s. This was all Park needed to know.526

  Park now focused his goals. He now knew what he wanted. He wanted Duncan Hines’s name and face on the labels of all the GLF’s products. Hines’s name was an authoritative one; it was widely respected and revered; it connoted strength and confidence. But most important of all, it was trusted. Park was sure a package featuring Hines would arrest the attention of housewives and induce them to buy the GLF’s products. In his mind, Duncan Hines was a name well worth going after. Getting his cooperation, however, was another matter. Nevertheless, Park was determined to succeed where others had failed, and he soon put his master plan into action.

  One of the things Park always insisted on before first meeting important clients was to be prepared. “Know everything you can about that person,” was his motto before meeting anyone.527 Therefore, before he scheduled an interview with Hines, he sent one of his employees to the various libraries in Ithaca to literally photograph every article they had on the man.528 He quickly learned that Hines was not one to risk his reputation to make a dollar; wealth meant little to him. His philosophy, Park discovered, could be summed up in a sentence: One can easily earn another dollar, but if one loses his reputation, an opportunity may never again present itself to earn it back. This sentiment was not lost on him. Within days Park had absorbed so much information on Hines that he felt he knew him before he met him.529 So confident was he that he could sell Hines on his future plans that he prepared “completely finished Duncan Hines labels, in full color, on dummy cans, cartons and jars so that” the food expert “could see what the concept would look like.”530

  When Park believed himself to be thoroughly prepared, he launched his plan. With help from a friend of his, Robert Wilson, Park called Hines at his Bowling Green home and requested a meeting. Hines, who expressed skepticism at Park’s request, nevertheless accepted. A few weeks later in November 1948, Park approached the Waldorf-Astoria Towers in New York City, wearing a sartorial combination known to his later employees as “his Duncan Hines suit.”531 When Park was shown into a temporary meeting room the hotel had set up for the occasion, Hines was talking to someone from the Ford Motor Company who was trying to get him to endorse their latest automobile models. As he sat on the edge of his chair, Hines bluntly told the Ford executive that he did not endorse products, and that he used to drive a Ford but did not any longer because it “shook his liver.” After he hung up, he turned to Park and said “I guess you want me to endorse something for you. Well, I am glad you heard that conversation and now know that I don’t do that.”532 Hines, still agitated with the Ford executive, said rather acidly, “So, you’re going to make me a millionaire.” Park, knowing that Hines was more interested in keeping intact his reputation than in making money, quietly replied that, no, he had not asked for the meeting to make him a fortune. Rather, he was standing before him because he wanted to create food products in his honor. Park said, “By making your name more meaningful in the home, you can upgrade American eating habits.”533 Duncan Hines sat up at this statement. No one had ever said anything like that to him before. This young man was a little different from the rest of the dollar chasers he had been dickering with all morning. Park again reaffirmed to Hines that he had no interest in making any money from his famous name; rather, he was proposing a line of top-quality foods bearing Hines’s name that would complement what his eminent renown meant to millions of Americans. Park sweetened his offer; he told Hines that he could have complete con
trol over anything bearing his name. Then he added the clincher. Since Park knew how Hines felt about Americans’ eating habits and how disgusted he was with their regard for food, he told him he could help transform this attitude. He could encourage them to eat and respect foods which were healthy and disdain those which caused stomach problems. Park expanded on his initial remarks. He told Hines that if he allowed a company to use his name only on high-quality products bearing his personal endorsement, he would be doing his country a favor by directly influencing and upgrading American eating habits. This proposal had tremendous appeal to Hines; it affected his sense of honor. The concept of honor, Park realized, was the key in getting his attention.534

  At the conclusion of their first meeting, Park left Hines with the necessary background material for his proposal. When they met for breakfast the next morning, Park showed him the product prototypes he had designed, each bearing Hines’s name and face. “Hines picked up one and fingered it with some interest.” The prototypes aroused his curiosity. As the conversation progressed, he turned one package over repeatedly, trying to decide if he wanted to go through with Park’s proposal. After a few minutes, Park snatched up the others and eagerly showed them off. Forty-eight hours after their initial meeting, the two men agreed to a six-month trial partnership. One week later the two met again in Chicago, flanked by their lawyers, where they drew up and signed a contract, legalizing their temporary partnership. “Park gave Hines a certified check of a substantial amount to show he ‘meant business.’ In the contract,…there were escape clauses for Hines. He could pull out of the deal if his name and reputation were compromised in any way.”535

  As Hines saw it, if he was going to follow Roy Park’s lead down this uncertain road, the younger man would first have to prove his competence and gain his trust. Park did not fail him, and over the next few months, Hines became immensely impressed with his honesty and forthrightness. In his mind Park was just like himself, only younger. The two grew to like each other very much. But many turns in the road had to transpire before that bridge was crossed.