Accept my philosophy in the right spirit and you’ll find the answer to many of your problems.” The poster was signed by the fictional man himself, and every motivational poster from the company after that carried the “Bill Jones” signature. He introduced himself in the first poster in the line, which says “Hello everybody! I’m here to show you how to get the most out of life. They printed the constructive organization posters in a larger format, renaming them “action posters.” A new company joined the scene as well, Parker-Holladay Co., and it had a secret weapon to make even more people purchase their posters: Bill Jones.īill Jones was a fictional, fatherly character designed to share the wisdom he supposedly learned on the job with workers everywhere. In 1925, two employees from Mather broke off to create their own business, C.J. The subscriptions ran for about six years, and over the course of the program, more than 300 cards were created.īut then the small motivational cards went large-scale. With these cards, employers could encourage their teams to stop gossiping (“Movers-up discourage idle talk”), celebrate the new year by welcoming a fresh start (“good-by grouches, good-by bad habits,”), and remember important things (“Always carrying out instructions invites more important duties forgetting makes poor records”). It started with little cards for workers’ desks in 1923, called “ constructive organization posters.” The postcard-size motivations were sold on a subscription basis to companies from a printing house in Chicago, the Mather Company. They’d been struggling through union- and labor-based disagreements with their employees and realized hey, maybe this tactic would also work for us. The posters worked so well to mobilize people to join the Army ranks, in fact, that private companies took note. But although that acrobatic cat is the most well known, the history of motivational posters actually goes much further back, all the way to World War I.Īfter the United States joined the conflict in 1917, the government devised a plan to use posters to get more people involved in the war effort. Everyone knows about it everyone jokes about it. If you’re of a certain age, there’s almost no doubt you’ve seen an image like this tacked up on the ceiling at your dentist office, or hanging on the wall at the doctor. It’s the iconic motivational poster: an adorable kitten dangling precariously from a bar, or branch, or clothesline, with the words “Hang in there, baby” scrawled across the top.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |