Signs Around the World

During the first few years the family thought up all the corny stuff to go on the signs. As the idea caught the public funny bone, visitors to the store started contributing ideas. Today there are signs in the store promising $5 for every idea used. Other in-store signs offer to give a sign to anyone who will take it home and put it up. The walls are papered with snapshots of Wall Drug signs customers have put up from here to Hell.

The store gives away about 14,000 little ones and 8,000 big ones a year. "We've probably spent a million dollars for advertising," calculates Ted as offhandedly as if he were discussing last month's toothpick bill. "And we've probably gotten a million dollar's worth of free advertising in newspaper and magazine articles. One of those pages costs thousands of dollars if you buy it." Free publicity generated by the signs Dorothy calls "another break." Signs around town direct you to the store and to free parking. Signs in the store direct customer traffic, remind you to hear the cowboy orchestra, to pick up a sign, get a free drink of ice water, and about the Steam Threshing Jubilee in Madison, S.D., in late August. There's even a non-sign. While on vacation in London, Ted got the idea of a poster in the Underground (subway) trains. Soon startled London commuters learned that Wall Drug was 5,160 miles away, and if they'd write, they'd receive free literature about South Dakota, Wall Drug and the Badlands. These signs pulled twelve to twenty letters a day, and some of the Britishers actually came to see the store.