Betty Crocker

Betty Crocker is a trademark of the US company General Mills . The trademark was created in 1921 by Washburn Crosby Company, a forerunner of this company, to market a flour. Under the name Betty Crocker, among other things, radio programs were broadcast in the 1920s, which enjoyed great popularity among the US audience. Not all listeners were aware at this point that Betty Crocker was a fictional character and that different actresses were speaking her role. She became so well known that in 1945 Fortune Magazine chose Betty Crocker as the most popular woman after Eleanor Roosevelt .

After the end of World War II, Betty Crocker was also marketed on television. Embodied by various actresses, she appeared in various television programs, where she advertised products such as baking mixes and ready-made meals. General Mills still uses the name for a line of products and maintains a website that publishes recipes.

history

Female advertising medium

Gold Medal Flour , the flour for which the character Betty Crocker was created

Washburn Crosby Company

Washburn Crosby Company manufactured a flour called Gold Medal Flour and, following a competition, received hundreds of letters in addition to the solutions asking consumers for recipes and baking recommendations. In order to be able to reply with a personal letter, the advertising department developed the fictional character Betty Crocker. The first name Betty was chosen because it was classified as typically American and friendly-sounding. With the surname Crocker, the company honored William Crocker, a popular and recently retired manager of the company.

The handwriting-like logo that stands for the Betty Crocker brand was also developed in 1921 and used in almost unchanged form until 2003. Samuel Gale, Head of Advertising at Washburn Crosby Company, had the female employees of the company submit signatures in an informal competition, which should match the name. The winner was a secretary named Florence Lindeberg, who suggested an easy-to-read, but at the same time unmistakable signature. From then on, Gale had every letter with which the company asked for recipes or advice on everything to do with cooking and baking signed with this signature. For the first three years, the character was nothing more than the fictional signatory of letters to customers.

The choice of a female character as a corporate symbol or advertising medium is not an invention of the Washburn Crosby Company. Since the middle of the 19th century there have been a number of movements in North America and Europe to professionalize household management or to prepare women for running a household through appropriate training. This also led to the fact that consumers were familiar with representatives of these reform movements. Advertising professionals took advantage of this to feminize product presentations, as 80 to 85 percent of household shopping was done by women. In doing so, they sometimes used well-known personalities. For example, the product "Royal Baking Powder", a baking powder , was advertised with the information that Fannie Farmer used it in her famous Boston cookery school.

The kitchen test

When developing the character Betty Crocker, Samuel Gale made sure that customers perceive her as pragmatic, caring and at the same time contemporary. His target customers were young women who, unlike their previous generation, no longer learned how to cook and bake from their mother after completing their schooling, but skipped this phase of life until marriage because they went to college. For them, Betty Crocker should be responsible for the quality and value of the product. Washburn Crosby advertised the flour produced by the company with the “kitchen test” by Betty Crocker:

“First of all, the millers from Gold Medal Flour carefully select the best wheat with their expertise that they have acquired over the past 60 years. Before grinding it, they wash each individual grain in fresh, clear water. Then they send samples of each batch to the Gold Medal kitchen. Betty Crocker and her kitchen team then bake it in this friendly kitchen "

Advertisements stressed that Washburn Crosby failed to sell large quantities of manufactured flour because it failed that very kitchen test. From April 1926 to 1928, Miss Crocker offered Gold Medal Flour users the opportunity to send them a tried and tested collection of recipes for one US dollar. The recipe collection has been sold 350,000 times. Susan Marks, in her detailed examination of the advertising character Betty Crocker, attributes this success to the fact that kitchen equipment had changed significantly since the beginning of the 20th century and more inexperienced cooks were not able to create traditional recipes that were made for wood or Coal stoves were developed without fail to adapt to more modern stoves. Cookbooks were also expensive.

Cooking school and radio show

Washburn Crosby Company employees had already begun holding cooking demonstrations in front of women's clubs, in parishes and schools, and at trade shows in the early 1920s. These cooking demonstrations, first held in the Minneapolis and St. Paul area, proved so popular that the Washburn Crosby Company soon hired twenty more women to meet demand. Women who worked in this field typically studied home economics in college . Washburn Crosby Company decided in the fall of 1924 to establish a radio cooking show with Betty Crocker and acquired a radio station for it that could be received in a region from California via Illinois to Tennessee. On October 2, 1924, the first radio cookery program was broadcast under the title Good Food . Almost a year later, on September 21, cooking programs began to be broadcast throughout the United States. Susan Marks regards this step as courageous: The number of radio owners had increased from 5000 in 1920 to 2.5 million in 1924, but the radio was not part of the standard equipment of a household, the benefits of radio advertising had not yet been proven and Betty Crocker had not yet established itself as an advertising medium for the company's flour. However, it quickly became apparent that far more potential customers could be reached via radio broadcasts than via even the best-selling newspapers.

In 1925, two radio programs with distinctly different content emerged: The Betty Crocker Service Program and, on Fridays, The Betty Crocker Cooking School of the Air , which was occasionally called the Gold Medal Flour Radio Cooking School . Many listeners actively participated in this cooking show, the beginning of which attracted attention across the United States. In the first year no fewer than 47,000 listeners registered as students of this cooking show, in 1933 there were already 250,000. Those who signed up received a questionnaire about the recipes, which was returned to the Washburn Crosby Company along with the retailer's signature confirming that the student chef was buying Gold Medal flour. In this way, the cookery students earned their diploma at the graduation ceremony broadcast once a year.

Marjorie Child Husted

Susan Marks points out that most of the audience during this period assumed with great certainty that Betty Crocker was a real person. The fact that various actresses spoke the lyrics was veiled by the Washburn Crosby. Marks emphasizes, however, that the company cannot be accused of deliberately deceiving its customers, but the public admission that Betty Crocker is a fictional character came years later.

Marjorie Child Husted is the person who shaped and reoriented Betty Child from 1927 to 1947. Husted, a University of Minnesota graduate , had worked for Washburn Crosby for four years when she was promoted to head of the Home Service Department . Among other things, she had experience working for a support organization of the American Red Cross and was therefore also familiar with the situation of families with low incomes. Husted is also responsible for Betty Crocker asking her audience for suggestions as to which topics should be covered in the programs. The success of the radio show led to other companies also starting to broadcast radio programs that were primarily aimed at women or advertised products for everyday use. The broadcasts continued when Washburn Crosby decided in 1928 to merge with other mills to form General Mills .

Great Depression and World War II

Combat Household Food Waste - World War II US Department poster

Between 1929 and 1932, the average income for a US family fell 40 percent from $ 2,300 annually to $ 1,500. In 1933 more than 14 million, or 30 percent of the workforce of 47 million, were unemployed. It was also a consequence of the global economic crisis that more and more American families saw themselves forced to limit their expenditure on food. Betty Crocker's radio programs increasingly focused on recipes and menu suggestions for families who are particularly financially affected. The brochure Meal Planning on minimum and low cost budget (dt. Meals at minimum and low income ) was given away for free. Historian James Gray, who published a history of General Mills in 1954, pointed out that during those years marketing the company's products was almost secondary. How helpful the recipes and suggestions were for families who were particularly hard hit by the Great Depression is also shown by the numerous letters that General Mills received and that prompted Susan Marks to refer to the 1930s as the most altruistic years in the history of this advertising figure.

The entry of the United States into World War II meant rising food prices as well as rationing foods such as coffee, butter, sugar, and meat. Various departments of General Mills worked hard to make Betty Crocker an indispensable figure in the general war effort. Numerous recipes published with Betty Crocker's signature gave tips on how to save sugar.

1945 took the Office of War Information , the figure Betty Crocker as a daily host to the radio program Our Nation's Rations (dt. The rations of our nation ), among others, for the purchase of war bonds and donate blood as well as recommendations on how to deal with food to spread. The various actresses who played Betty Crocker interviewed soldiers, officials and nutrition experts and informed the audience about issues ranging from the worldwide food situation to sending Christmas parcels abroad.

After the Second World War

With the spread of television, General Mills turned to this medium. The actress Adelaide Hawley Cumming portrayed Betty Crocker in cooking, comedy and advertising programs until 1964. In 1950, the first Betty Crocker cookbook was published, which is still known as The Big Red due to its cover color and is a bestseller in the USA has been.

See also

• Betty Crocker Cookbook
• Marjorie Child Husted
• Betty Crocker kitchens
• Betty Bossi

literature

• Susan Marks: Finding Betty Crocker: The Secret Life of America's First Lady of Food. University of Minnesota Press, 2007. ISBN 978-0-8166-5018-7

Web links

• Betty Crocker, official website
• Products sold under the Betty Crocker brand name
• Betty Crocker Picture Cook Book Changes in the appearance of the advertising character

Individual evidence

1. ^ Susan Marks: Finding Betty Crocker , p. 116.
2. ^ Susan Marks: Finding Betty Crocker , p. 9
3. ^ Susan Marks: Finding Betty Crocker , p. 11.
4. ^ Susan Marks: Finding Betty Crocker , p. 12.
5. ^ Susan Marks: Finding Betty Crocker , p. 20.
6. ^ Susan Marks: Finding Betty Crocker , p. 14.
7. ^ Susan Marks: Finding Betty Crocker , p. 16.
8. ^ Susan Marks: Finding Betty Crocker , pp. 16 and 17.
9. ↑ Susan Marks: Finding Betty Crocker , p. 19. The original quote is: First the Gold Medal millers with their 60 years of experience carefully select the choicest water. Then samples of each batch are sent daily to the Gold Medal Kitchen. In this cheerful kitchen, Miss Betty Crocker and her staff bake from these examples.
10. ^ Susan Marks: Finding Betty Crocker , p. 18.
11. ^ Susan Marks: Finding Betty Crocker , p. 21.
12. ^ Susan Marks: Finding Betty Crocker , p. 22.
13. ^ Susan Marks: Finding Betty Crocker , p. 34.
14. ^ Susan Marks: Finding Betty Crocker , p. 29.
15. ↑ Susan Marks: Finding Betty Crocker , pp. 37 and 51.
16. ^ Susan Marks: Finding Betty Crocker , p. 35.
17. ^ Susan Marks: Finding Betty Crocker , p. 41.
18. ^ Susan Marks: Finding Betty Crocker , p. 50.
19. ^ Susan Marks: Finding Betty Crocker , p. 53.
20. ^ Susan Marks: Finding Betty Crocker , p. 50.
21. ↑ Susan Marks quotes extensively from letters to the editor who repeatedly emphasize the helpfulness of Betty Crocker's advice on how to feed a family on a limited income. P. 51 to p. 57
22. ^ Susan Marks: Finding Betty Crocker , p. 50.
23. ^ Susan Marks: Finding Betty Crocker , p. 107.
24. ^ Susan Marks: Finding Betty Crocker , p. 134.