The format of the ads is always the same. The six-line jingle

relates an event in the life of the main character, ending with the words “Sunny Jim.” The product name, “Force,” appears prominently in the center of the space. Below it is a slogan that implies a benefit of eating the cereal (e.g., “Better than a Vacation,” “A Different Food for Indifferent Appetites”). A brief testimonial about the pro-duct’s curative qualities appears at the bottom. A profile line-drawing of Sunny Jim appears in every ad; he is a slim, elderly man in an old-fashioned cutaway coat and high collar, his pants baggy from wear, his thin hair pulled back into a ponytail with one wisp curling from the top of his head. On his feet are felt slippers. Hanff revealed in a September 1902 Printer’s Ink interview that Ellsworth had approved the idea for the campaign only after seeing Dorothy Ficken’s illustrations.

To Ellsworth’s pleasure, the Sunny Jim campaign caught the public’s fancy. Hundreds of unsolicited Sunny Jim jingles began arriving in Buffalo, ultimately filling five large scrapbooks; a judge cited Sunny Jim in a court ruling; a seaside cave in La Jolla, California was named “Sunny Jim” when someone noticed that the opening resembled the trade character’s silhouette. A contemporary writer commented that “No current novel or play is so universally popular. He is as well-known as President Roosevelt or J. Pierpont Morgan.” To capitalize on this notoriety, Ellsworth arranged for two seven-foot high likenesses of Sunny Jim to be posted on the sides of a building in downtown Manhattan. The design of the cereal box was changed so that a drawing of Sunny Jim appeared on the right side of the front panel. The word “Force,” boldly written in red and blue block letters, appeared at the top of the yellow box.

How, then, did the Sunny Jim campaign become synonymous with advertising excess and failure? Quite simply, the more successful the Sunny Jim campaign was, the more the advertising community hated it.

The advertising industry’s first acknowledgment of Hanff’s success was an interview that appeared in Printer’s Ink in mid-September, 1902. Before describing Hanff, author James Collins summarized what many advertising men had been thinking:

While he concluded rather grudgingly that the cam-paign’s success had proved this opinion wrong, these words reflect the bias against the campaign. Yet it is difficult to understand why the advertising craft in general objected so strenuously. Jingles were a popular advertising form. A year earlier, Calkins & Holden had proudly announced to the world that their copywriter James K. Fraser, a recent Cornell graduate, created the highly successful jingle-based “Spotless Town” campaign for Sapolio, an abrasive soap. Like the Sunny Jim campaign, it used a six-line jingle and featured simple line drawings of the characters that benefited by using the product.

The real cause of their dislike is rooted much deeper: the advertising craft was afraid of what the success of the Sunny Jim campaign represented. Advertising was still struggling to be taken seriously as a reputable and necessary part of American business culture. This campaign challenged all the claims to special expertise being made by Calkins and his advertising brethren. It was written and drawn by two “girls,” as they are described in the article. Women weren’t considered serious advertising professionals because, it was assumed, they were just biding time until marriage. In addition, members of the public wrote their own Sunny Jim jingles, as if they, too, could write ad copy. A third reason, unstated in the Printer’s Ink interview with Minnie Hanff, was that the campaign was being run by amateurs: Ellsworth and his staff in Buffalo were deciding when and where to place the ads. If the Sunny Jim campaign were acknowledged as a success, it would cast doubt on the new foundations of the American advertising industry. Ultimately, the answer was simple: declare the campaign a failure, despite all the evidence to the contrary.

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