Текст к заданию 2
Once upon a time, the butcher, the baker, and the candlestick maker were separate producers of goods and services. Now they are all likely to be rolled into one big corporation family.
Take, for example, the Pillsbury Doughboy; the company he represents is most recognized as one of the nation’s biggest bakers. The concept for the Doughboy came from Rudy Perz, then the creative director at the Leo Burnett ad agency in Chicago. Perz imagined him popping out of a can of Pillsbury refrigerated biscuit dough. In 1891 Post checked into the Kellogg brothers’ renowned sanitarium in Battle Creek, Michigan, in hopes of revitalizing his frail health. Post, ill for several years, was weak and confined to a wheelchair. The stay proved propitious; while at the Kelloggs’ sanitarium, Post came up with several ideas which would eventually be profitable.
Today, the Doughboy is present in nearly 30 countries – and is featured on products ranging from atta flour in India to frozen pizza in Greece. In Latin America, he’s “El Masin,” which translates to “The Little Dough.” In Germany and Austria, he answers to the name “Teigmännchen” or “The Little Dough Man.” And in Israel, he’s called Efi – a Hebrew nickname for “cute little baker.”
But there’s more to Pillsbury Doughboy than pastry and pancakes. It also owns Burger King and Steak and Ale Restaurants, big beef suppliers to American eaters. And, yes, there’s a candlestick maker. It’s Wilton Enterprises, a subsidiary that produces “character candles” for birthday and party cakes.
The Wilton story began in 1929 with one man’s passion and talent for making confectionery art and resulted in a method of dessert decorating that today has made cake decorating and confectionery art available to everyone not just for professional bakers and chefs.
In the Pillsbury family, too, are American Beauty Macaroni and Green Giant.
By corporate standards, though, Pillsbury is small potatoes. Other food companies have heartier appetites. Beatrice Foods (ex The Beatrice Creamery Company), for example, has 137 divisions listed in the Standard Directory of Advertizers. These divisions make everything from soup (La Choy wonton) to nuts (Fisher Nuts, South Georgia Pecans).
The Beatrice Creamery Company was founded in 1894 by George Everett Haskell and William W. Bosworth, by leasing the factory of a bankrupt firm of the same name located in Beatrice, Nebraska. At the time, they purchased butter, milk, and eggs from local farmers and graded them for resale. They promptly began separating the butter themselves at their plant, making their own butter on site and packaging and distributing it under their own label. They devised special protective packages and distributed them to grocery stores and restaurants in their own wagons and through appointed jobbers. To overcome the shortage of cream, the partners established skimming stations to which farmers delivered their milk to have the cream, used to make butter, separated from the milk. This led to the introduction of their unique credit program of providing farmers with hand cream-separators so they could separate the milk on the farm and retain the skim milk for animal feeding. This enabled farmers to pay for the separators from the proceeds of their sales of cream. The program worked so well, the company sold more than 50,000 separators in Nebraska from 1895 to 1905. On March 1, 1905, the company was incorporated as the Beatrice Creamery Company of Iowa, with capital of $3,000,000. By the start of the 20th century, they were shipping dairy products across the United States, and by 1910, they operated nine creameries and three ice- cream plants across the Great Plains.
Other Beatrice products include cabinets, tools, cold storage equipment, adhesives, home furnishings, yachts, mobile homes, and chemicals.
Another giant is General foods. General Foods has been in many ways the prototypical American food processor. The company was a pioneer in the acquisition and assimilation of smaller food companies and built a huge multi-national, multi-product corporation. It has also historically applied leading-edge technology to its product development. For example, General Foods snatched up Clarence Birdseye’s company well before the food industry recognized the potential of frozen foods. Later innovations, including Tang instant breakfast drink, Pop Rocks carbonated candy, and Cool Whip nondairy dessert topping, all originated in the laboratories of General Foods. General Foods also stands as the largest coffee producer in the world. The company’s Maxwell House, Sanka, Brim, Yuban, and General Foods International Coffees brands make up roughly 25 percent of total sales. General Foods is the nation’s number-three producer of breakfast cereals (Post), the leader in powdered drink mixes (Kool-Aid, Country Time, Crystal Light, and Tang), and the nation’s top producer of gelatin dessert products (Jell-O).
The groundwork for General Foods was laid by Charles W. Post, a health enthusiast who tried to seduce America’s coffee drinkers away from the caffeinic drink with a cereal beverage he called Postum. Post built the company that would become General Foods with a number of promising products and the marvel of modern marketing.
But where is it now? When General Foods merged with Kraft, the General Foods got lost. That is too bad. Because Kraft is a fine name, but we associate that with dairy foods. We love the little dots that graced the old General Foods logo. And what a great shade of blue!
The other thing critical was that for generations, General Foods was a brand, and not just a company name. So much was lost by not having the General Foods logo associated with the company’s products. What a great logo it is; a classic designed by Walter Dorwin Teague in 1962.
All of these General Foods food brands are still around, although some, like Log Cabin, have been sold to other companies who have tried to extract some value out of the brands. But we believe they lack something trustworthy without the General Foods logo on the back.
In corporate America, who owns whom is as curious as the butcher, the baker, and the candlestick maker all rolled into one.