Tuesday, November 22, 2005

SPAM Advertising

Turning Lemons Into Lemonade Search Engine SPAM Advertising

Kids today know what spam is but when I was younger spam was something else entirely.

When I was in the Boy Scouts my friends were really into eating SPAM. Some of them it seems would live on it. For me though, I don't believe that I ever tried the Hormel Foods product, SPAM.

What makes this story interesting is the fact that Hormel turned their www.spam.com website into something of an advertising parody to take advantage of and advertise their SPAM food products. This is really turning lemons into lemonade.

It's the Official SPAM Home Page. The one in good taste. Like SPAM Luncheon Meat.

Don't be shy. Explore. See if you can find all of the great interactive features scattered throughout the site. (Here's a hint... check out SPAM in Time.)


The history of the name dates back to 1937 when the company coined the term and it became a famous trademark. Unfortunately the name brings out the unsolicited commercial email meaning, UCE more than the original trademark term.

Hormel looked upon the day with trepidation when the term SPAM would not be remembered for the great food product that they had come to build up but for the UCE that was proliferating on the World Wide Web through the millions of emails sent.

Ultimately, we are trying to avoid the day when the consuming public asks, "Why would Hormel Foods name its product after junk e-mail?"


The day may be sooner than Hormel envisioned when the meaning of this famous food product would be subjugated by a common Internet term, spam.

Maybe this is a lesson for all businesses to be continually aware of their trademarks and constantly be on the lookout for Can Spam brand diluting slogans.

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