This article presents a case study in both the history of commercial marketing and the interrelationship between business and politics via an examination of the postwar Labour government’s intention to nationalize sugar refining. In response to this government decision, the sugar refining industry, dominated by the imperial Tate & Lyle company, adopted an intense marketing campaign symbolized by the cartoon sugar lump, Mr. Cube, with a view to ‘‘informing’’ the public that they too might choose to defy nationalization. In so doing, the marketing industry was inextricably drawn into politics and, it is argued, for the first time adopted an ostensibly party political stance. By focusing on this cause in the brief period 1949—1952, a key moment in British marketing history is explored and the contested role of marketing in modern society is set out.
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