This essay originally published in the Sunday, July 28, 2024 edition of the Fortune Archives newsletter.
A century before AI-generated influencers, there was Betty Crocker.
Introduced in 1921, this gently smiling American housewife was a source of advice, recipes, and inspiration—and the recipient of a few marriage proposals. Then came the exposé: She was outed as a corporate-created brand avatar.
A 1945 Fortune piece on General Mills’ success in what we now call branding shocked the many who idolized Betty and her pioneering box cake mix. “Known to 91 per cent of housewives, Betty Crocker is also popular with men: ten lonely (or undernourished) males have written proposing to her,” the Fortune story noted in the caption of a photograph identifying board chairman James Ford Bell as the real Betty Crocker (and thus arguably the first documented catfish).
Betty and the brand came into existence when a recipe contest for General Mills’ Gold Medal flour elicited a massive response, and the company signed responses to the entries with the name “Betty Crocker.” Fortune reported that “a vice president who kept an eye on advertising thought a woman should sign the mail; women would wonder at a man being mixed up in a recipe contest.” (It’s a cringey line to read in 2024, to be sure, and not the only one in the 1945 article.)
Fortune’s revelation did not hurt General Mills in the long run: Today the company is No. 203 on the Fortune 500, with annual revenues of over $20 billion. The 1945 article focused on the risks General Mills was then taking by branching out from its core business of milling flour into such side ventures as fats and oils, and even a World War II–era weapons division. Over the decades, all this expansion has paid off: The company now controls a wide range of household-name brands, from Pillsbury to Old El Paso, Häagen-Dazs to Yoplait—and, yes, Betty Crocker.
In 2024, Betty Crocker continues to thrive, with cookbooks and a broad food product line that ranges beyond cake and brownies to include mixes for pizza dough, muffins, pancakes, and other foods.
And the ghost in the machine seems to be alive and well: Registering an account on bettycrocker.com
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