House and Garden 
A Nutritious Food and Drink For All Ages 
The Development and Triumph of a Great Advertising Idea: By Rae Fell 
S TRIKE a keynote and keep it. That policy 
triumphs anywhere, but especially in an 
advertising campaign. Consider the articles 
that publicity has made famous from ocean to 
ocean. In each case there will be found one strong 
centralized idea around which the intricacy of all 
the advertising is hung. No more striking example 
of the virtue of the crystallized idea can be found 
than in the unprecedented success of the publicity 
tactics used by the men who, during the last twenty 
years, have introduced Horlick’s Malted Milk to 
millions of persons throughout the world. Where- 
ever newspapers and periodicals go 
this food drink, which two decades 
ago was little known, has become 
associated everywhere in the public 
mind along with one heroic figure, 
Shakespeare. 
Americans worship the great 
goddess Success. When any great 
achievement is attained, every one 
wishes to learn how it happened. 
Not more than a quarter of a 
century ago William Horlick, of 
Racine, Wisconsin, originated Hor¬ 
lick’s Malted Milk. About this 
time Horlick’s picture advertise¬ 
ment, often styled “The Maid and 
the Jersey,” sprang into existence. 
The graceful red-cheeked countrj^ 
lass, and the healthy Jersey heifer, 
have become known to every house¬ 
hold. 
Horlick’s Malted Milk Company 
needed advertising that had nov¬ 
elty, attractiveness and cleverness, 
but entirely in good taste. Nothing 
so embodies good taste and culture 
in the minds of people as the Plays 
of Shakespeare. Here was the 
field that could be drawn upon with 
impunity. 
The many ’ excellent qualities 
peculiar to Horlick’s Malted Milk 
could have been exemplified in 
picture and in story; but paramount 
was the purity of the milk. “As 
pure as delicious, as wholesome as 
sweet.” The advertisers of Horlick’s Malted Milk 
adapted this phrase from Hamlet’s speech to the 
players. 
Claiming great purity, Horlick’s Malted Milk 
Company set out to produce a pure, complete milk 
food, which should be, like Caesar’s wife, “above 
suspicion.” Scientific methods to obtain and con¬ 
serve purity, together with strict sanitary regula¬ 
tions from the cow to the package, were developed 
and are rigidly maintained. 
The cows which contribute to the great supply of 
milk used by Horlick’s Malted Milk Company are 
carefully selected. None are admitted to the herd 
until they have been approved by the Company’s 
veterinary surgeon as healthy and well-developed 
cows, capable of yielding a large supply of pure, 
rich milk. 
The Company next demands extreme cleanliness 
in the barns. These must be white and clean. 
well ventilated and lighted to furnish a pleasing en¬ 
vironment for the cow. The food and drinking 
water must be of the highest grade obtainable. 
The milk pails in which the milk is first received, 
and all cans in which it is transported to the works, 
are carefully inspected each day, and thoroughly 
washed and scalded by methods which insure 
absolute cleanness. The milk, when delivered to 
the works, is immediately stored for a few hours 
which intervene before it is used in the preparation 
of Horlick’s Malted Milk. During this time it is 
kept in a beautiful refrigerating room, artificially 
cooled^aC'all seasons of the year. To secure the 
high standard of purity and cleanliness set by the 
Horlick Malted Milk Company, a quarter of a cen¬ 
tury ago the plant was placed in the green fields of 
the great dairy district of the Northwest, near 
Racine, Wisconsin. Far removed from the filth, 
smells and bacteria-laden dust of larger cities, with 
the pure air of the country and abundance of sun¬ 
light, the sanitary condition of the laboratories and 
works are maintained at the highest excellence. 
From the surrounding country carefully selected 
barley is obtained, and with important scientific 
methods converted into malt needed for this ideal 
food product. 
Horlick’s Malted Milk is an ideal food for babies 
and invalids. Cow’s milk is good food for a calf but 
not for a baby. It lacks many of the sugars that 
mother’s milk contains. Horlick’s Malted Milk 
Company has formulated a milk which adds the 
necessary malt extracts to raw or condensed milk 
to make it a good substitute for mother’s milk. 
Moreover, to assist weak stomachs, the milk has been 
partially predigested, consequently is acceptable to 
most delicate stomachs. 
So Horlick’s Milk is a food for persons of all 
ages, weak or strong. Consequently an advertise¬ 
ment is required that exemplifies a food for world¬ 
wide use. Searching for such an advei'tisement, 
keeping all the time in mind the Shakespearean 
policy, the advertisers very logically decided to 
adapt in some way the “Seven Ages of Man” as 
laid down by Jacques in “As You Like It.” On 
this plan was constructed the advertisement which 
is probably the greatest picture 
sermon in advertising history. 
Jacques’ words beginning, “All the 
world’s a stage,” have been taken 
and pictured to magazine readers 
associating Horlick’s Malted Milk 
with the gamut of man’s years. 
First, “there is the infant in its 
nurse’s arms.” Upon this phrase 
the artist has dravm a youngster’s 
introduction to Horlick’s Malted 
Milk. He is a tiny thing in a long 
dress, but energetic enough to make 
known his desire for the food upon 
which he waxes lusty. Then comes 
the schoolboy, who “with shining 
morning face, creeps unwillingly on 
his way to school.” The artist has 
improved considerably on Jacques’ 
conception of the lad. Jacques’ 
boy crept off like a snail, but the 
lad brought up on Horlick’s Malted 
Milk, with boundless energy and 
good temper, runs merrily to school. 
Some years pass, the school boy 
has become a lover. Not “sighing 
like a furnace,” nor “writing wo- 
ful ballads to his mistress’ eye¬ 
brow.” He treats his sweetheart 
to Horlick’s Malted Milk, a compli¬ 
ment just as delicious as his ballads 
and certainly more satisfying. 
We see the lover again, but as a 
soldier, “seeking the bubble reputa¬ 
tion at the cannon’s mouth.” He 
is wounded, the picture shows, but 
a Red Cross nurse is near him with 
the food that has brought him 
through infancy and boyhood to 
manhood. 
Prosperous looking and stout, we 
find our hero again as the Justice. 
He is “full of wise saws and modern 
instances,” the chief of which is 
“That’s meat and drink to me.” 
On the verge of old age we have our hero again. 
Spectacles on his nose show his sight is failing; but 
his frame is stout and his face has the ruddy hue of 
health. By no means an old man, he has under¬ 
taken a journey on the railroad. On the dining 
car he calls for the inevitable Horlick’s Malted 
Milk. When we come to the final scene of the 
Seven Ages of Man, “the end of this eventful his¬ 
tory,” we see our hero gray-haired, with his aged 
wife near him. It is old age now. But the man 
and his wife are strong and vigorous to the last 
chapter. 
It remained for the Horlick’s Malted Milk Com¬ 
pany to originate and utilize this Shakespearean 
advertising. While it is held together by a single 
crystallized idea, that of letting Shakespeare do 
the talking, it has unlimited possibilities of develop¬ 
ment. It appeals to the high-bred cultured taste, 
but is ajDpreciated by the most illiterate. As 
Shakespeare is the world-wide poet, the poet of all 
classes, even to the most lowly, so Horlick’s 
Malted Milk is a product designed to win the 
affections of all persons and all classes. 
Thus is the public educated. 
In writing to advertisers please mention House and Garden. 
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