ZMT: Daily Fact: Is Betty Crocker a real person?

Daily Fact: Is Betty Crocker a real person?

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Betty Crocker is a made-up character.

Some personalities are born, while others are cooked up. The latter was the case with Betty Crocker. In October 1921, the Washburn-Crosby Co. (which would later evolve into General Mills) advertised a contest giveaway in the back of The Saturday Evening Post. In order to get a pincushion shaped like the company's principal product — Gold Medal Flour — 30,000 readers completed a cut-out puzzle of townspeople rushing past a Gold Medal sign. Lots of the finished puzzles were bundled with letters containing baking queries from women. At the time, the Gold Medal advertising department had an all-male staff, while the home services personnel (initially charged with developing recipes and giving demonstrations) were entirely female. For a while, the advertising team responded to the letters, seeking insight from the home services staff. But advertising manager Samuel Gale thought the women writing in would rather hear from another woman, so he had his reports invent a chief of correspondence named Betty Crocker. The advertisers thought "Betty" sounded wholesome and friendly; "Crocker," meanwhile, was a nod to the company's recently retired director, William G. Crocker.

Beginning in 1924, a new Washburn-Crosby home economist named Marjorie Child Husted voiced (and wrote) the Betty Crocker character on daytime radio's first cooking show, "Betty Crocker Cooking School of the Air." Although the show was based in Minneapolis, national distribution soon followed — as did hundreds of marriage proposals. Among the longest-running radio broadcasts in U.S. history, "Betty Crocker Cooking School of the Air" lasted for 24 years, even overlapping with "Our Nation's Rations," a 1945 program Betty Crocker (Husted) hosted at the request of the U.S. Office of War Information (the show was devoted to helping home cooks make the most of rationed foods). Betty Crocker then made her way to television with The Betty Crocker Show (1950–1952) and Betty Crocker Star Matinee (1951–1952). Actress Adelaide Hawley Cumming assumed the namesake role in both projects, and afterwards provided in-character baking demonstrations in walk-on commercials during The George Burns and Gracie Allen Show for several years. While Betty Crocker was taking on the entertainment world, General Mills commissioned a line of Betty Crocker products, starting with a dried soup mix in 1942. Today, Betty Crocker groceries are sold on every continent except Antarctica. And if you call the General Mills headquarters in Minnesota, there's always a "Betty Crocker" standing by, ready to answer your culinary questions.

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Numbers Don't Lie

Varieties of Betty Crocker products for sale today

200+

Year "Fortune" magazine declared Betty Crocker the "second best-known woman in America"

1945

Weight, in pounds, of the biggest marble cake ever, created by Betty Crocker Middle East in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia

1,613.78

Published Betty Crocker cookbooks, including the all-time bestseller "Betty Crocker's Quick and Easy Cookbook"

63 million

A psychologist convinced Betty Crocker to make their cake mixes less convenient.

Hoping to sell more flour, General Mills — Betty Crocker's parent company — entered the cake mix industry in 1947. (The first mixes Betty Crocker sold were for Ginger Cake, then Devil's Food Cake.) All of the brand's early mixes included powdered milk and eggs, meaning customers only needed to add water. Cake mix sales doubled between 1947 and 1953, the period when Pillsbury — a future General Mills property — also entered the market. However, sales increased only 5% from 1956 to 1960. To improve on this disappointing data, General Mills sought help from Ernest Dichter, a Vienna-born psychologist, marketing consultant, and author who popularized focus groups. Based on his interviews with housewives, Dichter determined that the women felt guilty and self-indulgent when they relied on these simple cake mixes. He proposed tasking home cooks with providing their own eggs, so they could feel like they'd contributed to the final dish. Thus Betty Crocker omitted the powdered eggs from their recipes, heralding the change with the slogan, "Add an egg." Sales figures began to soar once again — although Something from the Oven: Reinventing Dinner in 1950s America author Laura Shapiro is wary of giving Dichter too much credit for the sales spike. She notes that cakes made with fresh eggs also tend to have a better texture and taste. In addition, food magazines of the era harnessed the idea that cake baking is merely the prelude to cake decorating — a more creative and impactful way to share love through food.

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Daily Fact: Is Betty Crocker a real person?