Making Their Mark: Meek And Beach Put Coshocton On The Map

You can find them in virtually every household in America. They're on the desks, in the pockets and on the refrigerators of millions of people. They're stuffed into closets, drawers and cupboards, performing their job year in and year out.

What are they? They're promotional products – those ubiquitous imprinted items (pens, magnets, mugs, key tags, caps, calendars, t-shirts, matchbooks, etc.) that carry the advertising message of countless corporations and businesses. In the hands of consumers, employees and other target groups, promotional products give a company (and its logo or ad message) long-term exposure and connect with recipients in a unique and personal way, becoming a part of their daily lives at home and at work. Look around. They're literally everywhere.

But just a little over a hundred years ago, such items were all but nonexistent. That is, until a couple of Ohio newspapermen had a flash of inspiration that changed the course of modern advertising.

A Burlap Beginning

Jasper Meek was only six when his father died of a heart ailment while serving as a volunteer in the 178th regiment of the Ohio infantry during the Civil War. He wasn't old enough to take on the responsibility of running the family farm, and his mother couldn't afford to hire help. Consequently, she was forced to move her family to the nearby community of Newcomerstown, Ohio, where she would be closer to her relatives.

A village on the Tuscarawas River, Newcomerstown was a thriving community when the Meeks arrived. Surrounded by rich farmland, it was a hub of commercial activity in the region. With both water and rail connections for transporting goods, it was also becoming a prosperous industrial community despite the war, typical of many small towns in the North at the time.

In 1878, when Meek's friend, a printer's apprentice named A. W. Search, asked him to invest his savings in a weekly newspaper in Coshocton, Ohio, Meek thought he was hearing opportunity's knock. He didn't know much about printing, but the promise of profit lured him to pool his money with Search. Together they bought The Coshocton Age.

The two young newspapermen were able to buy the paper at the right price mainly because it wasn't a very profitable business at the time. They struggled to keep their company afloat by doing odd job printing between the weekly editions. Unfortunately, Coshocton was a town of only about 4,000 residents, and there simply wasn't enough business to keep the paper's presses busy. Search gave up the ghost in 1881, selling his interest in the paper to Meek, who wasn't so easily intimidated by difficult times.

Meek knew the purchase of the paper hadn't been such a great deal after all, but he was still in business and still positive he could make something out of his printing operation. Always on the lookout for new ways of making money, he was intrigued when a salesman from New York, a "sharp-witted Yankee traveling man," began working Coshocton merchants, selling them large quantities of imitation "greenbacks." The greenbacks were circulated by merchants and entitled the customer to a discount when presented at a store.

The "Yankee drummer's" sales promotion scheme was a natural, Meek thought. The printing could be done on his newspaper's presses. He was already selling advertising to local businessmen, so it would be easy for him to sell them something else when he made his regular rounds. But what? They already had more than enough fake greenbacks.

Legend has it that the sight of a youngster dropping his schoolbooks in the dirt answered Meek's question. He decided to make schoolbags that merchants could give to their customers. The bags would have the merchant's name and advertising message printed on the outside. Then the children in the community would carry these advertisements all over town with their books and school supplies on the inside.

Meek bought some burlap fabric and had his printers set the names of several local stores in large type. The type was put into the flatbed newspaper press. Printing on burlap instead of newsprint proved to be no easy matter, but after a few adjustments the cloth ran through. Next, Meek hired a young woman with a sewing machine to cut up the burlap and sew it into school bags, 12 by 15 inches.

With samples in hand, Meek made the rounds of the local merchants with this new advertising scheme. The first to order was Cantwell's Shoe Store. Other local merchants soon followed.

Never before in this part of the country had advertising been combined with a useful gift. The schoolbags with advertising messages received an unusual amount of attention. Businessmen in the surrounding communities were soon sold on the idea, and the orders poured in. Meek realized he had a good thing going and separated his booming ad specialty operation from the newspaper business.

He didn't know it at the time, but his book bags would form the foundation of what would become a multi-billion-dollar industry.

Medieval Marketers

One of the earliest examples of promotional products may be more legend than fact: The story goes that medieval armor-makers presented complimentary wooden pegs to each knight they outfitted. The pegs could be driven into the wall and used to hang the armor. Naturally, the craftsman's name and/or mark was hand-carved on each peg.

King George III of England used an early promotional item for his coronation in 1768. On one side of a card there was a likeness of the new king, and on the other a reproduction of his coat of arms. His purpose in distributing the gift was "to promote goodwill" and counterbalance the general unrest of his subjects in the colonies. Imprinting on the specialty said "In memory of the good old days."

Among the first people known to use promotional products in the United States was none other than George Washington. He had metal buttons engraved with his initials to build goodwill during his campaign for a second term in office. The buttons were given to his friends and followers.

William Henry Harrison also used promotional products in his successful 1840 campaign for the presidency. The famous Indian fighter printed his slogan "Tippecanoe and Tyler too" on posters, buttons and badges.

Harrison may have been the first to use the medium for positive PR to counteract some mud-slinging aimed at him. A Democratic newspaper charged that all Harrison wanted out of life was a pension, a log cabin and plenty of hard cider. He turned this attack to his political advantage by using the log cabin and cider barrel as symbols of his humility and simplicity, distributing wooden nickels showing a log cabin and the words, "The People's Choice," as well as a star-spangled handkerchief that read "William Henry Harrison, The Ohio Farmer." Torch-light parades with cider barrels and small log cabins on wagons rolled through streets all over America, and Harrison won the election handily.

In addition to political campaign items, early American promotional products included calendars and almanacs. As early as the 1820s, almanacs carried advertisements on the back for family Bibles, cough drops, pectoral powders, vegetable painkillers and other sundries. Some of these almanacs were sold, but most were given away, the cost borne in part by advertisers.

In Philadelphia, the Ketterlinus Lithographic Manufacturing Co. began printing calendars with advertising on them possibly as early as 1850. The firm was founded in 1842 by Eugene Ketterlinus, a Bavarian immigrant. Ketterlinus quickly became known for fine color lithography, and in 1852 gained the distinction being the first to erect an iron building in Philadelphia. The company was also known for its World War I "Liberty Loan" poster and its exports of calendar pictures.

In 1878, two brothers, Andrew and Jacob Geiger, opened a job printing shop in Newark, New Jersey and began printing commercial advertising calendars, fans, posters and cards. The business continued to prosper as successive generations of Geigers guided the firm. Today, Geiger (now located in Lewiston, Maine) is one of the largest firms in the promotional products industry and is still run by the family.

As you can see, promotional products have been with us through the ages. But up until the late 1800s, it was usually the advertiser who sought out the imprinted product directly from its manufacturer, rather than being approached by a tradesman or salesperson, as Meek had done with Cantwell's Shoes. The thing that set Meek apart from those who had come before was the concept – packaging an imprinted item (the book bags), a target market (children) and a unique distribution strategy (giving them away at a shoe store), a tactic that still defines the industry today.

Competition Emerges

Flush with the success of his new business, in 1889 Meek organized the Tuscarora Advertising Co., naming the firm after the valley where he spent his boyhood. He moved the new firm to an abandoned mill two blocks from his newspaper offices and began to expand his line.

At first, Meek and his sales force had the distinct advantage of selling without competition – but that didn't last long. Henry D. Beach, editor of the rival weekly newspaper in Coshocton, the Democratic Standard, had been enjoying a patronage job as the local postmaster while Meek was building his business. The sinecure ended on March 4, 1889 when Grover Cleveland left office.

Beach had been eyeing Meek's operation, and was more than a little irked when his in-laws, who owned Cantwell Shoes, became the first customers of his rival's new business. So as soon as Beach left the post office, he opened a specialty advertising company of his own, the Standard Advertising Co.

Unlike Meek, Beach was a hometown boy, the son of an established Coshocton merchant. His father was prominent in local affairs, an active Democrat and served on the town council. At 17 years of age, Henry was employed as a printer's apprentice and worked in the State Printer's office in Columbus. In 1871 he married Camilla Cantwell, also of Coshocton.

After investing in and printing a series of Democratic newspapers in Central Ohio, Beach returned to Coshocton in 1879 to publish the Democratic Standard in partnership with W. H. McCabe. In 1890, he sold his interest in the paper to McCabe to devote himself to his new business – specialty advertising.

Early Innovations

Beach started experimenting, squeezing strips of wood into his newspaper presses, making yardsticks, flyswatters and paint mixers, all with merchants' names printed on them. The rivalry between Meek and Beach was keen and served to stimulate the growth of both firms. The two businessmen tried to outdo each other, scrambling to be the first to print advertisements on anything that would take ink. Cloth caps and aprons, hats for horses, marble bags, thermometers, buggy whips, card cases, calendars and fans were all turned out in rapid succession. Beach's firm grew rapidly and, like Meek, he soon found his newspaper offices too confining. He moved twice before building his own plant in 1896.

By the turn of the century, Coshocton was manufacturing thousands of metal advertising trays which today are worth several hundred dollars apiece as collector's items. The trays advertised Coca Cola, mineral water and beer. They're known for their vivid, high quality reproduction and also for the expense and labor involved in their manufacture. Each tray was run through the press as many times as there were colors. Thus, if a tray had 20 shades, which was not uncommon, it would require 20 limestone plates, 20 separate passes through the press, and after each press run the metal had to be completely dried.

Meek continued adding products to his line, including art calendars added in the late 1890s. To produce the art for his calendar line, he imported artists from across the country and throughout the world, including the art centers of Berlin, Paris and Munich. Coshocton soon boasted a commercial art colony larger than that of New York City. The primary subject matter for these calendars: beautiful women with names like Hypatia, Marguerite, Adeline and one of the most famous, the Chrysanthemum Girl. For the enrichment of the community – perhaps to make life in Coshocton more bearable for the artists who had come from the great cultural centers of the world – business owners organized festivals, May walks and concerts. Life was grand in Coshocton.

The Rivalry Ends, And Begins Again

Throughout the 1890s, Beach and Meek maintained an amiable rivalry. But by 1900 competition from specialty companies that had formed in other parts of the country was becoming formidable. On April 1, 1901, the two old rivals merged their firms as a way to present a united business front against outside competition. The new company was called the Meek and Beach Co., with Henry Beach as president. The sign manufacturing staff and facilities were concentrated at the Standard plant, while the calendars and specialties in leather, paper and celluloid were designed and manufactured at the Tuscarora plant.

Beach stayed with the newly formed company only a few months, however. On December 11, 1901, he formed the H. D. Beach Co., which specialized in signs. Perhaps the two rivals found that working together just wasn't possible. The local history of Coshocton county, written in 1909, offers the following account of the separation:

"Mr. Beach had been slowly coming to the opinion that he personally would much prefer to concentrate his attention to making a limited line of advertising specialties. As he himself put it, the various lines of advertising goods, at first few and simple, had become so numerous and complex that it was very much of a burden and in some ways a manufacturing disadvantage for one concern to cover the whole field. He realized that the manufacturer who would hold his own would have to specialize. He concluded, therefore, that he would withdraw from the great institution of which he was co-founder and establish a new concern of his own."  

Other Early Innovators

Developing an item carrying an advertising message was in no way the exclusive brainchild of Jasper Meek, although he's most often credited with founding the promotional products industry in America. The fact is, given a competitive commercial situation and a literate populace at any time in history, a specialty advertising item or two was probably devised by some enterprising merchant somewhere.

For example, another firm that, like Geiger, started in Newark, NJ, was the Whitehead and Hoag Co., founded by Benjamin S. Whitehead. As a youth, Whitehead imprinted silk ribbon and button novelties for souvenirs and began experimenting with imprinting on thin sheets of a new material called celluloid.

Whitehead went on to perfect the celluloid button, one of the best known and most widely used of all specialty advertising products. In 1891, his company was incorporated as Whitehead and Hoag. Hoag was Chester R. Hoag, a neighbor whom Whitehead had patronized for twine and other supplies. Also in Newark, the J. L. Sommer Manufacturing Co. began imprinting both sides of its stock buttonhooks and shoe horns in 1879.

And near Jamestown, NY, the American Manufacturing Concern began imprinting the rulers, yardsticks and cribbage boards it had been turning out since 1807. The firm, now the Falcon Rule Co. of Auburn, ME, still manufactures wood advertising specialties.

These companies and their Coshocton contemporaries formed the nucleus of a national specialty advertising industry. For the first time, promotional products became a bona fide advertising medium available for the use by virtually any business.

In the 150 years since, the industry has grown to over $16 billion in annual sales. Today more than 3,000 manufacturers sell their products to nearly 20,000 value-added re-sellers who act as middlemen, calling on corporate buyers and business owners, selling creative concepts, packaging and distribution along with imprinted merchandise of all descriptions – even the occasional burlap book bag.

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