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"Welcome to pure food city": tracing discourses of health in the promotional publications of the Postum Cereal Company, 1920-1925
Örebro University, School of Humanities, Education and Social Sciences. Department of Media and Communication Studies.ORCID iD: 0000-0001-5554-4492
2023 (English)In: Journal of Historical Research in Marketing, ISSN 1755-750X, E-ISSN 1755-7518, Vol. 15, no 3, p. 171-200Article in journal (Refereed) Published
Abstract [en]

Purpose: This paper aims to investigate three promotional publications produced by the Postum Cereal Company - A Trip Through Postumville (1920), How I Make Postum (1924) and The Wonderful Lunch Boxes (1925) - with the aim of understanding how language and other semiotic resources are used to promote its products as good and healthy choices.

Design/methodology/approach: The three publications were collected from the HathiTrust Digital Library and University of South Florida Tampa Special Collections. They were subjected to multimodal critical discourse analysis to tease out their subtle characteristics and how a combination of language, image, colour, typography and composition are used to represent certain ideas and values related to health and well-being.

Findings: The publications subscribe to three distinct genres - "inside the factory", "friendly spokesperson" and "fictional world" - each of which are aimed at different target audiences. The first seeks to promote Postum as an open and transparent company; the second to promote Postum as a company that cares about its consumers; and the third to promote the health benefits of Postum in a fun and accessible manner. Nonetheless, they are united in their overall objective to link the regular consumption of Postum as essential for good health.

Originality/value: To date, few studies have been conducted on the Postum Cereal Company, while the limited research conducted on promotional publications has tended to overlook discourses of health and well-being. The three genres outlined in this study, thus, have the potential to foster a reappraisal of promotional publications and showcase their ability to offer new understandings on historical approaches to marketing, particularly the link with health and science.

Place, publisher, year, edition, pages
Emerald Group Publishing Limited, 2023. Vol. 15, no 3, p. 171-200
Keywords [en]
Postum, Promotional pamphlets, Health, Well-being, Science, Marketing, Advertisements, Cereal, Wheat, Multimodal critical discourse analysis
National Category
Media Studies
Identifiers
URN: urn:nbn:se:oru:diva-106124DOI: 10.1108/JHRM-09-2022-0024ISI: 000986204600001Scopus ID: 2-s2.0-85159335776OAI: oai:DiVA.org:oru-106124DiVA, id: diva2:1761316
Available from: 2023-06-01 Created: 2023-06-01 Last updated: 2023-12-01Bibliographically approved

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O’Hagan, Lauren Alex

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