Bear tag

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Logo bear brand

Bärenmarke is a brand for milk products and other foods that is used in particular for milk and cream in sterilized , condensed or otherwise concentrated or dried form, mixed milk drinks and butter. It was first used for condensed milk in 1912 . Hochwald Foods GmbH has been the owner of the brand since 2004 , which is used by its subsidiary Allgäuer Alpenmilch GmbH. Bärenmarke is one of the best-known brand names for dairy products in Germany (brand awareness 96%). The associated advertising slogan "Nothing beats bear brand - bear brand quality" (the second part of the slogan was from 1961 to the 1980s "... - bear brand for coffee" ) is widely known.

history

Beginnings

The Berneralpen Milchgesellschaft founded on April 2, 1892 by the hotelier César Ritz in Bern , which manufactures “preserved milk and other dairy products in the dairy factory in Stalden in the Emmental , which in some way, be it with the dairy industry, be it with the conservation and The sterilization process that she uses is interrelated ”, was the first to use a brown bear , the heraldic animal of the city of Bern , as a symbol of its products. Prominent partners were Emanuel Muheim, Jean von Wattenwyl , Georges Marcuard, Hans Pfyffer von Altishofen, Numa Droz and Auguste Escoffier . The company had set up a German branch in Biessenhofen ( Ostallgäu ) in 1905 , which had originally been producing sweetened condensed milk for children and the sick as well as powdered milk for bulk buyers since 1906, initially also chocolate and chocolate products under the name "Alpursa". There, in 1912, the first unsweetened condensed milk containing 10% fat was produced in Germany, under the name of the bear brand Alpen-Milch and a brown bear feeding her young animal with a milk bottle on the label. The canned milk product was delivered under the name Bear Brand (English bear , bear, brand , brand) to Great Britain and its colonies in Africa and Asia.

During the First World War , the production of condensed milk with 10% fat was banned in Germany and there was a shortage of raw materials, so that during this time only skimmed milk was processed and sugar confectionery was produced instead of chocolate . On December 6, 1917, “Alpursa AG” ( Latin ursa , bear) was founded in Munich , and entered in the register in Kempten on March 9, 1918 . The design of the bear was changed, it got softer, less aggressive forms. In 1923, Alpursa opened the first can factory in Biessenhofen. In 1926, Ursina SA was founded in Geneva as a holding company for the companies that had emerged from the Berneralpen Milchgesellschaft in various countries, from which an international group was to emerge. On February 23, 1931, the restructured “Alpursa AG” was renamed “Allgäuer Alpenmilch AG”. Ursina was relocated to the headquarters in Konolfingen as Ursina AG in 1934.

By 1933, children playing in the surroundings of a healthy mountain meadow world appeared for the first time in advertising, as a contrast to children in industrial cities.

In 1951 the advertising figure, which is known to this day and is based on a teddy bear , was developed. The word mark “Bären-Marke” was registered in Germany on September 11, 1958, “Bärenmarke” on May 10, 1996. This brand was intensively advertised by the now “Deutsche Alpenmilch” with a wide variety of advertising materials - from posters to playing cards to collector's pictures - and expanded into an umbrella brand for a wide variety of dairy products. The company even had its own department for the nationwide window dressing of dairy shops by its own decorators. In the late 1950s, an entire bear family was created: father, mother and three children. In 1960, the Steiff company was awarded the contract to manufacture hundreds of bear tag bears as a prize draw . In the same year, the Munich graphic artist Fritz Wilm redesigned the trademark.

Nestlé

In 1970 Ursina AG merged with Interfranck-Holding AG, Zurich, to form Ursina-Franck AG, Bern, which in turn was taken over in 1971 by Nestlé Alimentana SA, from 1977 Nestlé SA . Bärenmarke thus became a Nestlé brand, production remained with Alpenmilch AG, now also a Nestlé subsidiary. The brand advertising adapted to the technical possibilities. If cinema advertising was used after the war, when color television , which was launched in 1967, began its triumphant advance in the 1970s, bear brand advertisements were the first to be produced in color, followed by dozen. The design of the bear in today's bear brand advertising was developed by the advertising agency BBDO . The bear brand bear was voted the most popular advertising figure in Germany in a 2006 survey by the brand museum.

After the sale in 2003 of Allgäuer Alpenmilch, which has since been renamed a GmbH, Nestlé retained the non-European trademark rights to the “Bear Brand”, which is still of considerable market importance in Asia. Because of the danger there that illiterate parents will mistake the contents of the packaging for a breast milk substitute suitable for infants due to the depiction of the bear mother and baby, which led to Kwashiorkor diseases and individual deaths, the bear cub was replaced by a large milk glass in 2009.

Hochwald Nahrungsmittel-Werke

Bear brand condensed milk was produced in the Nestle plant in Biessenhofen until the end of 2007.

In 2003, Hochwald Foods, based in Thalfang in Hunsrück, acquired the European rights to the Bärenmarke brand with Allgäuer Alpenmilch GmbH, including the condensed milk and fresh milk products division of Nestlé in Polling-Weiding near Mühldorf am Inn / Upper Bavaria. The Nestlé production facility in Biessenhofen, as a co-packer for Hochwald, produced dairy products under the “Bärenmarke” brand until 2008 . In mid-2008, Hochwald relocated this production to his own plant near Mühldorf am Inn. In addition to traditional condensed milk, fresh products such as milk, cream and butter, mixed milk drinks and milk foam from the spray can are now sold under the bear brand.

Corporate social responsibility

Since 2006, Allgäuer Alpenmilch GmbH has been supporting the project initiated by the World Wide Fund for Nature to protect brown bears in the Alps with the bear brand . On July 23, 2008, the company announced that it would temporarily forego the bear in the logo in order to draw attention to the endangered brown bears. In September 2008, the 1-liter milk packaging was given a logo for four weeks, which instead of a bear image contained the words “Save the Bears”.

Trivia

With the takeover of the St. Ursula Weingut und Weinkellerei-GmbH in Bingen, formerly Vila Sachsen, the group also entered the wine business. From 1964, the Golden October brand was sold in four flavors: Rhine wine, Moselle wine , Palatinate and French Rotspon . Golden October was offered with a screw cap and at a price of around three DM .

literature

Web links

Commons : Bear Tag  - collection of images, videos, and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ^ "Nothing beats a bear brand ..." ( Memento from March 23, 2014 in the Internet Archive ), Trierischer Volksfreund from September 16, 2003
  2. Bärenmarke on slogans.de
  3. ^ Christoph Zürcher: Berneralpen Milchgesellschaft. In: Historical Lexicon of Switzerland . September 16, 2010 , accessed June 14, 2019 .
  4. Bärenmarke in the Stamp Museum
  5. Register number 767398 in the register of the German Patent and Trademark Office
  6. Register number 394016041 in the register of the German Patent and Trademark Office
  7. Hubert Barennes et al .: Misperceptions and misuse of Bear Brand coffee creamer as infant food: national cross sectional survey of consumers and pediatricians in Laos. In: British Medical Journal (2008), 337: a1379 - see also several replies to this
  8. to the changed figurative mark: Reply from Roland Stieger, Business Executive Manager Dairy, Nestlé (Thai) Ltd.
  9. Reinhold Löchle: End of the "bear brand " production at Nestlé goes without layoffs. In: Allgäuer Zeitung (December 8, 2007)
  10. ↑ The bear brand does not have a bear in the logo. In: Berliner Morgenpost (July 24, 2008)
  11. DER SPIEGEL 40/1964: Help for the disgruntled