I don’t know how come, but I have never heard this story before.
What story?
The story about how a simple content marketing assignment produced the legendary story of Rudolph The Red-Nosed Reindeer.
Montgomery Ward’s Use Of Content Marketing At Christmas
In 1939, Robert L. May was given a simple assignment for the store Montgomery Ward.
Montgomery Ward had been giving away coloring books for Christmas every year and they were tired of wasting money purchasing coloring books to use.
They came up with an idea.
They decided to save money by creating their own coloring books, so May was given the assignment to create a coloring book for the store.
There was one problem.
May’s wife, Evelyn, had contracted cancer and was pretty ill when he started the assignment.
But he pressed on anyway.
How The Story Of Rudolph Evolved
As he began to think of a story, May said he “drew on memories of his own painfully shy childhood when creating his Rudolph stories.”
He ended up deciding to make the main character a reindeer, because his 4-year-old daughter, Barbara loved the deer at the zoo.
He came up with the idea to use a reindeer, but couldn’t come up with what to call him. He toyed with the idea of naming the reindeer “Rollo” and “Reginald,” but wasn’t satisfied with those names.
Finally he decided to use the name “Rudolph.”
As he wrote the story, he would run parts of the Rudolph poem by Barbara to make sure they got her approval.
The Tragedy That Almost Ended It All
He felt like he had something, but then tragedy struck.
His wife died in July, 1939.
His boss offered to take him off the assignment, but May refused and finished the poem in August, 1939.
What happened next surprised both him and Montgomery Ward.
The Surprising Success Of Rudolph The Red-Nosed Reindeer
In its first year of publication, shoppers loved the poem so much that 2.4 million copies of Rudolph’s story were distributed by Montgomery Ward!
World War II began and restrictions on paper use halted the production of the coloring books.
Believe it or not, it wasn’t until 1946 when the coloring books could be produced again.
And guess what happened when they were produced?
This time 3.6 million copies were distributed to Montgomery Ward shoppers.
The story had taken off and begun to have a life of its own.
The Offer He Had To Refuse
In 1946, May received an offer from a company that wanted to do a spoken-word record of the poem.
May had one problem.
He couldn’t give his approval, and actually receive any compensation for it, because even though he wrote the story he didn’t own the rights to it.
Montgomery Ward held the rights to the poem.
But a surprising twist of fate was about to change everything for May.
Somewhere around 1946 or early 1947, Sewell Avery, Montgomery Ward’s president, gave the copyright rights to the poem to May – free and clear.
With that change of luck, May allowed the the spoken-word version of the poem to be produced, which resulted in big sales success.
But the story doesn’t end there.
The Big Risk And The Big Payoff
In 1947, the head of a small New York publishing company, by the name of Harry Elbaum, decided to take a chance on the story.
He decided he would put out an updated print edition of the Rudolph (poem) book.
No other publishers wanted anything to do with the story, because they thought the millions of copies that were already given away would hurt sales.
Elbaum had a hunch it wouldn’t matter. And guess what?
He was right. The book became a best seller.
The Rejected Song That Became A Hit
But there is one more part of the story you need to hear.
It’s another case of rejection that led to surprising results.
You see, in 1948, a guy named Johnny Marks, who just happened to be May’s brother-in-law, wrote a song adaptation of the Rudolph story.
The song ended up being turned down by many popular singers of that day.
It was turned down by people like Bing Crosby and Dinah Shore.
Finally the “singing cowboy” Gene Autry, who had already recorded the song “Here Comes Santa Claus (Down Santa Claus Lane) the year before,” finally said he would record it.
It was a choice that would immortalize both the song and the story forever.
The song “Rudolph, the Red-Nosed Reindeer” was released in 1949 and became such a huge success that it ended up selling more records than any other Christmas song, with the exception of “White Christmas.”
You Better Not Pout
So the next time you’re wondering if content marketing is just fad that will go away, remember that most famous reindeer of them all and realize that content marketing has been around for a long time and will continue to be.
Sources: Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer and Robert L. May (both on Wikipedia)
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I’m a business strategist, consultant, content creation specialist, and speaker. I’ve been studying effective marketing and business methods (both online and offline) since 1999.
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