“When it rains, it pours” started out as a good thing…

Back in November 2009, not long after I first started writing this blog, I happened to see two news stories in a row that had quotes using the saying “When it rains it pours.” 

One was a story about the Boston Bruins hockey team, which had just lost another in a series of losing games. Player Blake Wheeler told a reporter the team’s losing streak was “a when it rains, it pours type of thing.”

That same day, I saw an article about the controversy over a health care amendment leading Democrats had floated in Congress.

In the story, Republican Congressman Dave Camp from Michigan was quoted as saying: “When it rains it pours. This amendment only increases the government involvement in health care, raises more taxes and opens more taxpayer subsidies to illegal immigrants.”

After seeing the two back-to-back uses, I decided to look up the origin of this idiomatic expression.

One of the interesting things I found was that, while “when it rains, it pours” commonly has a negative connotation, the original, high-profile use that popularized the saying was designed to be positive. 

It dates back to 1911, when the Morton Salt Company developed a new breakthrough in table salt technology.

Until then, most table salt was sold in a raw, coarse-grained form that clumped and caked when rainy weather made the air in a house even slightly humid.  

The Morton food scientists solved this problem by reducing the grain size and adding a small amount of magnesium carbonate, an anti-caking agent.

As a result, the salt didn’t cake and clump. It could be poured or shaken out as nicely as dry sand, even when it was humid indoors due to the weather.

The Morton execs asked their ad agency – the renowned N.W. Ayer & Son firm – to create a catchy ad slogan for this new and improved salt.

Morton rejected a couple of initial slogan ideas, but the Ayer admen eventually came up with a winner: “When it rains, it pours.”

It was an updated, positive twist on the old English proverb “It never rains but it pours,” which had a negative connotation, suggesting that when troubles come, they come one after the other.

As expected, American consumers, who previously had to put up with inconveniently clumpy salt when the humidity was high, understood exactly what the Morton slogan meant.

It meant that Morton Salt would stay dry and come out of the box or shaker perfectly, even when it was raining outside and humid inside.

That was indeed a very good thing. Nonetheless, over time, the Americanized version of the old English proverb typically came to be used in a negative way, like its forbear.

The Ayer firm also created an image of a little girl with an umbrella to go with the slogan. This famous combination was trademarked by Morton and, according to US Trademark registration information, first used in commerce on November 6, 1914.

Over the decades, the image of the “Umbrella Girl” on boxes of Morton salt has evolved.

The company has adopted other marketing slogans. And, few people today ever think about the “problem” of clumping salt.

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Related reading…

The ironic dual anniversary of “subliminal advertising” and the Bushism “subliminable”…

On September 12, 1957, market researcher James Vicary held a press conference that made a new term famous.

Vicary claimed to have developed “hidden” ads that could be used in movies and TV shows. Ads that flashed by so quickly they were not consciously noticed by viewers, but affected their buying habits.

He coined the term “subliminal advertising” to describe this technique.

The term and concept generated widespread attention from claims he made at his press conference.

Vicary said he’d conducted a six-week experiment at a movie theater in Fort Lee, New Jersey.

As viewers watched the movie Picnic, he supposedly used special equipment to flash two phrases on the screen for one three-thousandth of a second every five seconds – so fast that they were below the threshold of conscious perception.

One hidden message was “Hungry? Eat popcorn.” The other was “Drink Coca-Cola.”

Vicary claimed his subliminal ads increased Coke sales at the theater by 18% over normal levels and boosted popcorn sales by 57%!

This revelation may have sounded good product manufacturers, but alarmed and outraged the public and the media.

In 1958, the National Association of Broadcasters proactively banned the broadcast of subliminal ads.

But scientists who looked into Vicary’s research soon debunked the idea that such ads have any real effect.

Vicary later admitted he had falsified the data. In fact, it’s questionable whether he actually even conducted the Ft. Lee movie experiment.

Despite that, the bogeyman of “subliminal advertising” was launched into our language and cultural consciousness.

The issue of subliminal advertising made headlines again during the 2000 presidential campaign that pitted Republican George W. Bush against Democratic nominee Al Gore.

In September, a Republican attack ad aired on national television briefly flashed the word “RATS” on screen right after showing a photo of Gore, as the announcer ominously warns that under Gore’s health care plan “bureaucrats” would make  medical decisions.

If you watch the “RATS” ad very closely on YouTube, you will see that those four letters actually seem to be the tail end of the word “BUREAUCRATS” as that word is “flown into” the screen.

Is that true “subliminal” advertising? Maybe. Maybe not.

But the “RATS” ad drew outraged complaints from Democrats and created a media uproar.

So, on September 12, 2000, Bush responded to the controversy by uttering a classic Bushism :

“I wanna make it clear to people that, you know, the idea of putting subliminable messages into ads is, is ridiculous.”

Yes. He actually said “subliminable.”

In fact, he said it several times that day when addressing the ad hubbub.

And, that’s why the date September 12th is linked to both the original term “subliminal advertising” and to the newer, um, word “subliminable.”

It’s an incredidable coincidence!

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Related reading and viewing…

SEPTEMBER 6 - OMG re: W. and OB-GYNs

Back in January of 1775, British playwright Richard Brinsley Sheridan's play The Rivals premiered. It introduced a character named Mrs. Malaprop.

Her name was inspired by the French term mal à propos, meaning “inappropriate.” The name reflects the fact that Mrs. Malaprop was very linguistically challenged.

In the play, she said lots of funny things like: “Forget this fellow – illiterate him from memory” (when she meant to say “obliterate him...”).

Mrs. Malaprop’s mangled remarks became famous and spawned the word “malapropism.”

That, in turn, begat other “isms,” like the term “Spoonerisms.” It was created for the legendary slips of tongue made by British Reverend William Archibald Spooner (1844–1930). Like the time when he tried to make a cheery toast to Queen Victoria but it came out as “Three cheers for our queer old dean!”

Flash forward to George W. Bush, 43rd President of the United States.

Dubya also became renowned for his malaprops. They have been dubbed “Bushisms” – and there are many of them.

Indeed, dozens of books and websites are wholly devoted to Bushisms. And, one example near the top of most lists of Bushisms was uttered on September 6, 2004 – five years ago on this date.

Pres. Bush was in Poplar Bluff, Missouri, giving a stump speech during his campaign to be reelected to his second term as president.

He was criticizing his opponent, Democratic Presidential nominee Sen. John Kerry, for picking a former trial lawyer, Sen. John Edwards, as a vice presidential running mate.

Bush noted that “frivolous lawsuits” by trial lawyers increased malpractice insurance costs for doctors and health care costs for patients.

Then, he added: “Too many good docs are getting out of business. Too many OB-GYNs aren't able to practice their, their love with women all across this country.”

This unintentionally salacious and hilarious head scratcher is now enshrined in the Bushism Hall of Fame. As it should be.