Mom and Apple Pie

Betty Crocker, General Mills’ “spokesperson,” is perhaps the best-known icon in American marketing. At 85 years old, she may also have the greatest longevity. So it pains me to point out that there never was a real “Betty Crocker,” a fact obscured by her creators for decades.

“Betty Crocker has served as both a symbol of service and a brand name,” notes General Mills spokesperson Pam Becker.

Her life began in 1921, when the Washburn-Crosby Co. of Minneapolis wanted a spokesperson for its Gold Medal flour. The company’s marketers created a character by joining “Betty,” a popular woman’s name of the era, with the last name of a former corporate director, William Crocker.

“Betty’s” first job at Washburn-Crosby was responding to mail from consumers seeking advice, typically about baking. The sheer volume of mail (all of which, then and now, is personally answered) led executives to realize that they could probably sell a whole lot more flour if they gave Betty a bigger voice. In 1924, Gold Medal launched the Betty Crocker Cooking School of the Air, broadcasting on radio every Friday morning. Marjorie Husted wrote the scripts and at times provided Betty’s radio voice, a role she played for the next 10 years.

Washburn-Crosby merged with several other companies in 1928 to become General Mills. From the transition, Betty Crocker emerged more important than ever. She had become such a personality that artist Neysa McMein was hired to create a face for the voice. McMein created the image of an attractive, rather serious-looking woman in her 30s. McMein’s work was used for 20 years, the longest-running of the eight official portraits depicting Betty Crocker over 70 years.

The first illustration debuted in 1936 in magazine ads celebrating Betty’s 15th anniversary. As part of this promotion, consumers were offered copies of “Betty Crocker’s 15 Prize Recipes” free by mail. Five million consumers responded, an amazing 15.2% of the 33 million U.S. households at the time. General Mills even threw in a coupon good for a colored reproduction of McMein’s portrait.

During the food-rationed war years of 1941-45, Betty helped America cope with meatless recipes as well as cakes that didn’t rely on butter or lard. By this time, General Mills was receiving an astonishing 5,000 letters per day for Betty. Subjects ranged from cooking tips to relationships.

Competitors were keenly aware of the volume generated by this icon. Pillsbury’s Best Flour had “Ann Pillsbury,” A&P supermarkets created “Ann Page,” Pet Milk had “Mary Lee Taylor,” General Foods used “Frances Lee Barton” and Quaker Oats introduced “The Quaker Man.” None came close to Betty Crocker in popularity.

A 2000 report in Advertising Age rated Betty Crocker No. 4 in a list of brand icons of the 20th century.

A number of men wrote the company over the years, trying to coax Betty out on a date. One woman in the company’s Home Services Division actually married one of Crocker’s spurned swains, setting off an unintended wave of publicity that Betty Crocker had taken a husband. Interest was so high that, when the radio show returned to the air that fall, the actress playing Betty had to announce in character that she was still single and far too busy in her job to settle down. A 1945 poll of America’s most-admired women showed Betty Crocker ranked second only to Eleanor Roosevelt.

By 1949, General Mills had issued more than a billion recipes under Betty’s signature and several cookbooks, but none had the impact of the mother-of-all recipe guides: 1950’s Betty Crocker’s Picture Cook Book. With its bright red and white cover and black-and-white photos, “Big Red” was second in sales only to the Bible when it premiered. The mere recitation of the names of these epicurean delights would make a trencherman weep: Cocoa Cake, Fudge Cake, Cream Cake, Tutti Frutti Cake, White Mountain Cake and, my favorite, Marshmallow Comfort Cake.

As TV supplanted radio, General Mills signed Adelaide Hawley as its TV Betty. Despite the fact that she was stunningly blonde, Hawley plied her role on the small screen from 1950 to 1958.

Since then, the “30-something” image of Betty has been updated seven times, and consumers pay attention. Her 1996 refashioning made news when her features took on a slightly more ethnic look.

The biggest change in General Mills has been the 2001 acquisition of rival Pillsbury. This merger required a restructuring of the two test kitchens staffs. It might also have been an opportunity to move Betty out of the limelight. Happily, tradition won out, and the new combined Betty Crocker Kitchens “are the most trusted kitchens in America,” Becker says.

Rod Taylor is senior VP-promotion and sports marketing for CoActive Marketing, Cinicinnati, OH. He can be reached at [email protected].

WHAT’S IN A FACE?

Only a handful of brands that have made the founder’s face into an brand’s icon. Here are a few of the best retail icons:

Thomas Lipton — Lipton came to New York from Scotland at 15. He returned home five years later in 1870 with enough money to open his own grocery store. While he’s known for tea, Lipton was an early retailing genius; a promotion that featured gold coins inserted in a huge wheel of cheese caused a near-panic run on its slices. It was Lipton who first packed tea in individual bags, selling 4 million bags the first year alone. Packages featuring his image now account for more than 50% of grocery store sales.

Chef Boyardee — Hector Boiardi was 17 when he came to America from Italy. After a few years in New York City, he migrated to Cleveland where he opened an Italian restaurant. Patrons were so enamored of his pasta sauce that they entreated him to package it for home use. He started selling sauce in jars in 1929, later adding cheese and pasta. In the 50s, my brother Gregory and I really knew our mother was showing the love when she dished out the Chef’s ravioli to us.

Orville Redenbacher — Far from being the eccentric rube he portrayed, Orville Redenbacher was a Purdue University-trained agronomist. He and a partner developed a hybrid strain of corn that when popped had plumper kernels. Redenbacher couldn’t sell his more expensive new product to the existing brands, but he knew it would sell. He decided to market it himself. It became one of the first super-premium brands in the grocery category. Hunt-Wesson bought the brand in 1976, but wisely kept Orville on as a spokesperson. Although he died in 1995, his image is still on every product.
— RT