Phoebe Snow (character)
Phoebe Snow was a fictional character created by Earnest Elmo Calkins to promote the Delaware, Lackawanna and Western Railroad. The advertising campaign, based on a live model, using impressionistic techniques and a fictional character, was one of the first of its kind.
[edit] The advertising campaign
Rail travel around the year 1900 was tough on passengers' clothes. After a long trip on a coal-powered train, travellers would frequently emerge covered in black soot. The exception to that rule was locomotives powered by anthracite, a clean-burning form of coal. The Lackawanna owned vast anthracite mines in Pennsylvania, and could legitimately claim that their passengers' clothes would still look clean after a long trip.
To promote this fact, Calkins advertising department created Phoebe Snow, a young New York socialite, and a frequent passenger of the Lackawanna.[1][2]:9 The ad campaign positioned Miss Snow as often traveling to Buffalo, New York, always wearing a white dress.
The first ad featured the image of Phoebe and a short poem:
- Says Phoebe Snow
- about to go
- upon a trip to Buffalo
- "My gown stays white
- from morn till night
- Upon the Road of Anthracite"
The campaign became a popular one, and soon Phoebe began to enjoy all the benefits offered by DL&W: Gourmet food, courteous attendants, an observation deck, even on-board electric lights:
- Now Phoebe may
- by night or day
- enjoy her book upon the way
- Electric light
- dispels the night
- Upon the Road of Anthracite
Phoebe soon became one of the United States' most recognized advertising mascots. The campaign's concept and its famous jingles were created by Earnest Elmo Calkins.[3]:9 Calkins said he based the campaign on an earlier series of Lackawanna car cards - All in Lawn - created by DL&W advertising manager Wendell P. Colton which had been built on a rather limiting nursery rhyme, The House That Jack Built, and featured a nameless heroine dressed in white. For his new campaign, Calkins adopted a form of verse inspired by an onomatopoetic rhyme, Riding on the Rail, that he felt offered endless possibilities.
"Phoebe Snow" was the only name Calkins ever used in the ads, and he laughed at later claims by Lackawanna officials that the name was selected only after lengthy scientific experimentation. The original artwork was first painted by Henry Stacy Benton who worked from a series of images of a model, Mrs. Murray, who was photographed in a variety of actual railroad activities. Gowned in white and standing in for the cool, violet-corsaged Phoebe, Mrs. Murray was one of the first models to be used in advertising.[3]:9
During World War I, anthracite was needed for the war effort, and its use on railroads was prohibited, thus ending her career. As she passed into legend, Calkins' heroine said farewell with the following jingle:
- Miss Phoebe's trip
- without a slip
- is almost o'er
- Her trunk and grip
- are right and tight
- without a slight
- "Good bye, old Road of Anthracite!"
[edit] Notes
- ^ Young, Margaret (2006). On the Go with Phoebe Snow: Origins of an Advertising Icon. 7. doi:10.1353/asr.2006.0029. ISSN 1534-7311. http://muse.jhu.edu/login?uri=/journals/asr/v007/7.2young.html.
- ^ Watkins, Julian (June 1, 1959). The 100 Greatest Advertisements (second ed.). Dover Publications. pp. 223. ISBN 978-0486205403.
- ^ a b "Manuscript Collections: Earnest Elmo Calkins/Willis E. Terry Letters". http://library.knox.edu/archives/manuscripts/calkins7.htm. Retrieved January 18, 2011.
[edit] References
- Watkins, Julian (1959). The One Hundred Greatest Advertisements, 1852-1958. Dover Publications. ISBN 0486205401.
- Sanders, Craig (2003). Limiteds, locals, and expresses in Indiana, 1838-1971. Indiana University Press. ISBN 0253342163. http://books.google.com/books?id=X9IoXE2tSK0C.
- Fowler, Gene (1949). Beau James: The Life and Times of Jimmy Walker. Viking Press. pp. 35.
