Elliott White Springs
July 19, 2006 1:36 AM   Subscribe

Elliott White Springs, heir to a southern cotton fortune, World War I flying ace, successful writer, and industrial leader who inherited a $13 million dollar company at the height of the Depression and increased its value more than tenfold. Springs created Springmaid sheets, invented an advertising strategy that used sex to sell his product. (more Springs sex.) Now Springs Global is an international icon. But is that because Springs understood "cultural competencies"? Or was he just a smart guy?
posted by CCBC (10 comments total) 4 users marked this as a favorite
 
I would say Springs was not just a smart guy, but also was born into the right rich family. Smarter than the Toronto Star writer who had to tell us this:

I neither recognized nor understood these cultural touchstones. This made me very happy. Being culturally incompetent is a fine thing. It means you're busy doing other things, like standing in line in IKEA, talking real estate at dinner parties, reading The New Yorker instead of Maxim, and other painful but necessary rites of adulthood.

Perhaps this is meant in jest, though I don't think so: he sounds like how I fear I come across when I mention I don't have a television. For me, my cluelessness means I'm poor and busy. For him, being unaware of the current crap culture is a badge of smug, adult honor. As for those things he says are indicative of adulthood, God help me if I ever stand in line at an IKEA or talk real estate at a dinner party. I don't want to buy crap furniture new or worry about owning a piece of property in which to spawn and die. Props to all you out there who do this, though, and buy new cars, to boot. It's all trickling down and swirling around, and I get to eat and have an opinion. It's very liberating.

Every generation, slowly or quickly, loses the cultural competencies of the one before it. It's shameful to even expect them to care about our tired, old pop culture. He reminds me of Allan Bloom's lament, except instead of our ignorance of the Dead White Male Canon, it's shameful we don't remember the same advertising jingles. Ours were more nuanced and polyphonic and had real soul.

I enjoyed the links to the ads and their cartoonists. The "buck well spent" one reminds me of one of my cultural competencies: Milt Gross' "Hiawatta Witt No Odder Poems." I read it in a book from 1940 called "Cartoon Cavalcade" which I'd found as a kid. I had to decode the "Hiawatta" from the original Longfellow. I am smug about this. You should get this, or you are culturally incompetent.

I dunno what to say about Elliot White Springs. It's too easy to open all the typical cans of classism, sexism, racism, and look back in revisionist fury at the bad white dude. Apparently, looking at his war record, the fucker had a deathwish and very little fear. Good on him for amassing the family fortune, easy enough as cotton and people both deteriorate. Cotton lives longer. Look at old quilts. Since the Green Revolution, we've been maxing out on the cotton and babies, all that sex and nitrogen. People need sheets for their beds. People have sex in bed. Genius, I guess, to put the two together. Convenient he was born into a cotton fortune, then, else he'd have just been another poor idiot in a mill or a trench.

God Bless him, regardless. He had adventures.
posted by eegphalanges at 4:04 AM on July 19, 2006 [1 favorite]


"A buck well spent"... this is slick! Where can I buy a copy? Is there good reproduction available online?
posted by ewkpates at 4:51 AM on July 19, 2006


Hey, neat! My grandparents live in Chester (site of one of the factories), and Springs (both the man and the company) has quite the reputation there. It is nice to get more than anecdotal information.
posted by Tullius at 8:12 AM on July 19, 2006


There is a building named for Springs (or one of his family members) at my alma mater.
posted by MrMoonPie at 9:41 AM on July 19, 2006


eegphalanges

I'm not sure I see anything wrong with having a sort of pride in not sinking to the bottom of our cultural morass. Although I do agree with you about the "standing in line in Ikea and talking about real estate" and such.

I don't see any reason why I should bother to keep up with aspects of popular culture I have no interest in. I don't read Dan Brown or Harry Potter. I don't watch reality television. I can't recognize most movie actors, and I certainly don't care anything about their personal lives. (When I saw Syriana, I honestly didn't know which actor was George Clooney.)

There is, of course, a difference between avoiding these things simply because they're popular and avoiding them because you have no interest. I get the idea our friend in Toronto leans more on the former.
posted by Target Practice at 12:50 PM on July 19, 2006


Hah, I love those ads.
TheStar guy is right on when he says "The Tease was the most effective method of leveraging sex in an ad. An inch of stocking top worked far better than a topless woman."
I don't mind a little sex in my advertising, what I object to is the full-on "You're male, so here are some boobs to get you to buy beer. Boobs! Boobs!"

Even today, those ads are still effective, since I've not heard of Springs Global before today and now will always associate them with those ads. heh.

However, to "Josh Abramson, one of the founders of collegehumour.com", who says"No one over the age of 25 knows what it means, but I guarantee you that ninety per cent of college students know what it is.":

I'm well over the age of 25, and I know precisely what "The Shocker" is and I've probably known about it since you were in grade school.
posted by madajb at 1:22 PM on July 19, 2006


But is that because Springs understood "cultural competencies"? Or was he just a smart guy?

Maybe he was a smart guy who understood cultural competencies.
posted by sour cream at 2:19 PM on July 19, 2006


Boobs! Boobs!

You have uncovered a disturbing s/r pattern in me: not only do my eyes immediately focus on pictures of boobs, they apparently automatically fixate on the word 'boobs', too.

Someone's putting Key 23 in my coffee.
posted by sonofsamiam at 2:45 PM on July 19, 2006


sonofsamiam,
What's that you were saying about b(o)(o)bs?
posted by bashos_frog at 3:08 PM on July 19, 2006


My boss these ads framed in his office. He said they were there when he moved in.
posted by Frank Grimes at 6:57 PM on July 19, 2006


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