Wyoming Almanac and History

               History and Opinion

                                            By Phil Roberts 

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  • History of Wyoming
    • Great Depression Consultants Hired to Economize Wyoming
    • Prohibition Repeal
    • Regulating Liquor in Wyoming After Prohibition
    • 2017 Fall History of Wyoming Syllabus and Lecture Schedule
    • Wyoming Constitution
    • Wyoming Debates Taxation, Sales Tax, Gambling, 1930s
    • GLO Land Records, Wyoming Notes
    • Cowboy State, Equality State 2014 version
    • New History- Water and Irrigation
    • Wyoming Attitudes on WWII Internment Camps
    • City Gun Ordinances in Wyoming
    • Memories of a Wyoming Life
    • Emperor Dom Pedro Crosses Wyoming
    • Refugee Resettlement and Immigration in Wyoming
    • Niobrara v League of Women Voters Capitol Times January 1983
    • Contest for the Capital
    • Cheyenne's Downtown Capitol Times 1982
    • Memorial Day List of Wyomingites Killed in Wars
    • Cowboy Health Care Fetterman Hospital Assoc
    • 1st Cases Ever Heard by Women on Juries, March 1871, Laramie, Wyoming
    • Classes Phil Taught 2012 to 2017
    • 2017 Fall American Environmental History
    • 2017 Class: History of the Railroad Across Wyoming
    • New History of Wyoming, Chapter 1:Treaties
    • New History of Wyoming, A Listing of Contents
    • New History of Wyoming, Chap. 17 The 1950s
    • New History of Wyoming An Introduction
    • New History Chap. 1, First Residents and Early Explorers
    • New History, Chap. 2, Fur Trade and Rendezvous System
    • New History, Chap. 3, Trail to Somewhere Else
    • New History of Wyoming, Chap. 3 Primary Documents
    • New History, Chap. 4, Coming of Rails
    • New History of Wyoming, Chap. 4 Primary Documents
    • New History of Wyoming, Chap. 5, Territory and Suffrage
    • New History, Chap. 6, Public Lands
    • New History, Chap. 9 History of Oil in Wyoming
    • New History of Wyoming, Chap. 8, Wyo Constitutional Convention and Statehood
    • New History, Chap. 14, Wyoming in the 1920s
    • New History, Great Depression and New Deal
    • Sedition Act World War I Wyoming Article
    • Phil Roberts Wyoming History website (UW) link
    • DAY 1 and DAY 2, Laramie Plains Museum, June 2016 Tour
    • DAYS 3, 4, 5 Laramie Plains Museum, June 2016 Tour
    • History of Wyoming on-the-road tour, 2014, Day 6
  • University of Wyoming Campus History
    • Textbook Controversy of 1947-48
    • Choosing the Land Grant Sections
  • Media History
    • Court Reform and the Muckrakers
    • Quest for Public Television
  • Readings in Wyoming History 5th edition
    • Give Them What They Want by Rick Ewig
    • Ethnicity in Wyoming by Carl V. Hallberg
    • Evolution of Roads Across Wyoming by Kris White
    • Lovell's Mexican Colony, GW Sugar Co
    • Home on the Range No More: Jeffrey City, by John Egan
    • Emerging Civil Rights Movement in Wyoming by Ibach and Moore
    • Chinese in Wyoming by Dudley Gardner
    • Loving Cecile: The Stanley Lantzer Case by Carol Bowers
    • Harvard Cook in Wyoming Badlands by Ginny Kilander
    • Hebard and Americanization by Frank Van Nuys
    • Virginian Meets Matt Shepard By Claudia Thompson
    • Black 14 Williams v. Eaton by James E. Barrett
    • Project Wagon Wheel by Adam Lederer
    • Cheyenne 100 Octane Plant by Mike Mackey
    • Fired by Conscience: Black 14 by Cliff Bullock 1992
    • Visions Beyond an Arrow of Fire: G. Edward Pendray, Rocket Pioneer by David Roberts
    • Theodore Roosevelt and Professional Land Management Agencies in the Yellowstone Ecosystem by Jeremy Johnston
    • Prohibition Agency First Case
    • Reflecting Community=3 Wyoming Museums by Patty Kessler
  • Buffalo Bones Stories from Wyoming's Past 1978-2015
    • Arbor Day in Wyoming
    • Arbuckle Coffee
    • Broadway's Mr. Abbott
    • Census Story 1880
    • Census Occupations 1880
    • Cheyenne 200 Auto Race
    • Christmas Stories, 19th Century
    • Como Bluff's World's Oldest Cabin
    • Edison Light Bulb and Eclipse 1878
    • Eliza Stewart, First Woman on a Jury
    • Gannett Peak, Named for Mapmaker
    • Great Diamond Hoax
    • Hollywood or Laramie?
    • License Plates: Numbers on Bumpers
    • Lovejoy's Toy: Wyoming First Car
    • Mrs Barriers Wyoming Disabilities Act
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    • Powder River, Let 'er Buck
    • Public Schools in Territorial Wyoming
    • Soldier's Widow Owned Townsite of Buffalo
    • Sleeping with Nuclear Genie
    • Seth Ward and Blizzards
    • Somewhere West of Laramie
    • Thanksgiving in Wyoming
    • Time Zone Arrives in Wyoming
    • Torrey's Rough Riders
    • Wife of Wild Bill: Agnes Thatcher Lake
    • Worland's Early History
  • Middle East History and Commentary
    • Cairo Letters 1999-2011
  • History of Oil, Spring 2017
  • American Legal History Syllabus Fall 2016
  • Phil's History Presentations and Papers
  • This Date in Wyoming History
  • Wyoming Almanac 25th Anniversary Edition
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    • Wyoming Political Myths
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  • Wyoming Notes
  • Political Comment

Somewhere West of Laramie

Somewhere West of Laramie:  An Advertising Legend

    By Phil Roberts

    “Somewhere west of Laramie there’s a broncho-busting, steer-roping girl who knows what I’m talking about.” So began a 1923 magazine advertisement that became legendary.

    National advertising firms use Wyoming scenes as backdrops to pitch everything from yogurt to beer, even though the products are neither manufactured in Wyoming nor sold in any great quantity in the state. Ad agencies use Wyoming because they know there is an emotional dimension to advertising that motivates consumers to buy a particular product. This dimension doesn’t rely on price, quality or even special features of the product. Image sells the product.

    Consumers identify with the myths of the West and Wyoming. Ads incorporating these images sell merchandise. Known as “image advertising,” the variety was unknown until 1923 when it was invented to sell a car. Indeed, the whole idea of image advertising was inspired by “somewhere west of Laramie” in 1923.

    Previously, car ads concentrated on practicalities—data on engine size, the number of forward gears, and special features such as side-curtains.

    In 1916, Edward S. Jordan borrowed $200,000 and started an automobile factory in Cleveland, Ohio. Contrary to conventional wisdom, the Wisconsin-born entrepreneur believed he could make a substantial profit from a small volume of sales. In his plant, he assembled his cars using parts made by other manufacturers.

    Like the dozens of small companies making cars in those days, Jordan faced stiff competition from major automobile makers. It was hardly a contest. The mass-produced Ford, for instance, sold for about $500 while Jordan barely could cover costs by selling his models for five times that amount. His favorite model, the Jordan “Playboy,” was an undistinguished roadster, in features much the same as any other then on the market.

    Sales flattened out in 1922 and Jordan, worried that his sales strategy might have been in error, decided to travel to the West Coast to relax and, perhaps, rethink his approach. How could his company survive in the face of stiff competition from dozens of other makers?

    The 41-year-old car maker and a colleague from the company rode a Union Pacific passenger train. As the train was passing through southern Wyoming, Jordan glanced out the window. There, in the waning sunset, he saw a beautiful young woman riding her horse alongside the train for a short distance, as if to race the locomotive. The sight so impressed Jordan that he turned to his companion and asked where they were. “Somewhere west of Laramie,” was the reply.

    Throughout the rest of the trip, Jordan thought about the incident and the image of the fast horse and beautiful young woman racing the train. Back home, he sketched out an advertisement for his car using the phrase, “Somewhere west of Laramie.” The copy made no mention of the car’s price, its engine size or quality.

    The drawing, in abstract style, showed a young woman on a horse racing against the Jordan Playboy roadster. The copy read:

  Somewhere west of Laramie there’s a broncho-busting, steer-roping girl who knows what I’m talking about. She can tell what a sassy poiny, that’s a cross between greased lightning and the place where it hits, can do with eleven hundred pounds of steel and action when he’s going high, wide and handsome.  The truth is—the Playboy was built for her. Built for the lass whose face is brown with the sun when the day is done of revel and romp and race. She loves the cross of the wild and the tame.

   There’s a savor of links about that car—of laughter and lilt and light—a hint of old loves—and saddle and quirt. It’s a brawny thing—yet a graceful thing for the sweep o’ of the Avenue. Step into the Playboy when the hour grows dull with things dead and stale. Then start for the land of real living with the spirit of the lass who rides, lean and rangy, into the red horizon of a Wyoming twilight.

    The ad first ran in the Saturday Evening Post in June 1923. Soon, sales of the Jordan Playboy roadster increased markedly and the company ran the ad in other mass-circulation magazines. The advertisement’s style and success did not go unnoticed. Soon, other auto makers copied the form of “image advertising.”

    Because of the ad, the Jordan sold well during the middle 1920s. Nonetheless, the firm failed in 1931, one of the numerous auto company victims of the Great Depression. Jordan turned to consulting work and, later, wrote a column for a car magazine.

    When he died in 1958, the New York Times obituary listed the ad as Jordan’s main accomplishment: “Its approach and colorful language set the pattern for modern automobile advertising,” the obituary noted.

    Jordan and his automobile faded into obscurity, but the advertisement became legendary. In 1945, readers of Printer’s Ink magazine voted it the third greatest advertisement of all time. Even today, advertising people point to “Somewhere west of Laramie” as one of the best ever produced.

 

Buffalo Bones: Stories from Wyoming's Past

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