Shoddy Goods 001: A newsletter from Meh
23I’m Jason Toon and this is Shoddy Goods, a newsletter from Meh about the stuff people buy, sell, and make. With the Paris Olympics kicking off next week, I salute the gold-medal winner for most baffling Olympic ad campaign of all time.
Let’s say you’re a huge corporation who owns a bunch of folksy, beloved consumer brands. You’re probably hoping your customers stay blissfully unaware of your very existence, right? You don’t have to be a branding expert to get that it would be a major turn-off, like when 30 Rock’s Liz Lemon learned her favorite artisan hipster jeans were ultimately sold by Halliburton.
But 40 years ago, one of those corporations made the bold decision to shout “hey, America, we’re the shadowy conglomerate lurking in your pantry.” And they did it on the biggest stage possible, with a saturation ad blitz during both the winter and summer Olympics.
You’ve known us all along
In the cozy warm-lit style of '80s packaged-goods commercials, the ads unspool vignettes of the most sacred moments of American life. Each scene stars an iconic product: Thanksgiving dinner with Butterball Turkey, a campfire weenie roast with Hunt’s Ketchup, a dad (played by future Back to the Future bully Thomas F. Wilson!) reading his kid to sleep with a mug of Swiss Miss Hot Chocolate.
Each scene climaxes with the protagonist looking into camera and intoning a single word: “Beatrice”. And then they hit you with the jingle: “We’re Beatrice… you’ve known us all along.”
Believe it or not, this might not be the creepiest moment in this commercial. Watch if you dare.
I was 10 during the 1984 L.A. Olympics. I was one of the 180 million people tuning in for every pole vault, every Retton flip, every splash in the water polo pool. So I saw these commercials dozens, if not hundreds of times. I remember schooling my friends on this crucial secret of the grown-up world, that the stuff at the grocery store was owned by some big company that also owned a bunch of the other stuff at the grocery store. I’ve always been a know-it-all.
Luggage and cat treats
How could it possibly it seem like a good idea to reveal the sinister puppeteer pulling the strings of Orville Redenbacher and Swiss Miss?
Because the ads weren’t really aimed at the general public. Or not directly. Beatrice CEO James Dutt had been stung by criticism from Wall Street that Beatrice Foods lacked the broad portfolio of brands, nationwide distribution network, and public profile that would make their stock a good buy.
So in 1983 the company engineered a takeover of another conglomerate, Esmark, in the biggest merger in U.S. history up to that point. Beatrice now had brands like Avis, Playtex, and Max Factor, along with an extensive distribution system. “In one stroke, we added major new food areas, backed by the strongest grocery sales distribution system in this country,” CEO Dutt was quoted saying in the Washington Post.
But it wasn’t cheap. Beatrice had to take on $3.5 billion in debt to make the deal, back when a billion bucks was real money. Wall Street didn’t like that, either. There’s just no pleasing some people.
So then Dutt felt even more pressure to prove that Beatrice was playing with the big boys. Like a losing gambler chasing that one jackpot that will get him out of the hole, Dutt couldn’t stop throwing more money on the table: in this case $30 million on the Olympic ad campaign. Yeah, that’ll show 'em.
Even at the time, people thought it was weird. As Smith, Barney analyst Ronald Morrow asked, “Does it give them a better image within the consuming public for someone who buys Samsonite luggage to know that the same company also makes cat treats?”
The flights of Chairman Dutt
Lest you think I’m being unkind to Dutt, the 1990 book Beatrice: from buildup through breakup by Neil Gazel paints the very picture of a manic, imperious CEO. “To many, Dutt seemed to be a man possessed,” Gazel writes, “irritated at questions about the reality of his goals.”
He threatened to fire some top Beatrice executives in front of a crowd at an industry conference and was unreachable for long stretches of time, retreating into (as Fortune put it) “Howard Hughesian seclusion.”
When he emerged from his bunker, it was often to jet around the world on the company Gulfstream for surprise visits to Beatrice offices and plants. But even if he couldn’t stop by in person, a painted portrait of Dutt watched over every one of those hundreds of Beatrice facilities, prompting the Mao-inspired nickname “Chairman Dutt”.
Company staffers thought Dutt’s heart truly belonged to auto racing. He flirted with a cockamamie scheme to build racecars in England and splashed out more company cash on a Beatrice motorsports team with Paul Newman and Mario Andretti.
Biff! They got you, too?
Dutt’s, er, magisterial leadership style was summed up by a cartoon he kept on the wall of his office captioned “All those opposed, signify by saying ‘I quit.’“ Two dozen of Beatrice’s top executives did just that. “He’s a very vindictive guy and I don’t think I need that,” one of the departed told Fortune magazine.
Cue a new round of furrowed brows on The Street and beyond. “Mr. Dutt, driven by a private vision and an unexplainable impatience, is on his way to ruining an important Chicago company,” opined Crain’s Chicago Business in a 1985 editorial titled “Jim Dutt’s Sorry Record”.
But maybe Beatrice was such a positive, likable company that the public association would actually help their brands, right? Maybe once the masses heard what good guys Beatrice were, they’d rush out to buy more Jolly Ranchers and La Choy Chow Mein?
Not that either. Beatrice was one of the defendants in the child leukemia toxic waste case chronicled in the book and movie A Civil Action, eventually found liable for a $68 million cleanup by the EPA. And they continued doing business in apartheid South Africa in the face of the growing international boycott that was a key factor in ending apartheid.
The devolution had been televised
Whatever Beatrice was trying to do with those commercials, it didn’t work. The campaign did raise the company’s name recognition to 68% of the U.S. public. ‘‘But so what?’’ a recently departed manager asked Fortune at the time. ‘‘Where is this reflected in the stock market, or the movement of products? Studies have shown no boost from the name Beatrice. The Olympics advertising probably didn’t sell one more item.’’
Dutt was ousted by the board less than a year after the Olympic closing ceremony, in August, 1985 - appropriately, while he and 600 employees were at an auto race. Without their motor-mad patron, the Beatrice racing team suddenly found its sponsorship yanked.
Beatrice itself was swallowed up and dismantled by 1989. After 95 years in business, a once-powerful American company had fallen apart. (Dutt died in 2002.) An entity called Beatrice Companies was revived in 2007 and is still kicking around, which just goes to show you that no drop of nostalgic brand equity is too tainted for somebody to try to squeeze a buck from.
What’s most striking to me today is not the obvious wrongheadedness of the Beatrice campaign, nor even the unsettling ads themselves. It’s how ahead of its time the story seems.
An out-of-control, hubristic, erratic CEO makes a bizarre and expensive play for Wall Street buzz in front of an audience of hundreds of millions, and torches immeasurable amounts of brand equity: sounds like something Elon Musk or Mark Zuckerberg could have done last week. But James Dutt and Beatrice were there all along.
Jason Toon
Shoddy Goods
*Wow, I had a vague memory of those ads but no idea how boneheaded that whole campaign was. Did you see these when they aired? Have any other memories of ridiculously misguided corporate PR? Let us know what you think in the comments below
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Dave*
- 30 comments, 25 replies
- Comment
I’m really hoping it’s about Prime Day but I’ll take anything.
@mikey I am so glad I was wrong with my rather mundane topic. I loved reading the newsletter! Can’t wait for the eventual podcast.
I’m hoping it will be discussing life sized badger statues.
/giphy olympic-rings
![](data:image/gif;base64,R0lGODlhAQABAIABAP///wAAACH5BAEKAAEALAAAAAABAAEAAAICTAEAOw==)
bath
Even though I am currently busy I did drop what I was doing and read it when I saw it hit my inbox. I have nothing of substance to discuss at the moment but just wanted to say thanks for this, it was a welcome diversion for a few minutes and I did enjoy the read!
To speak on topic, I don’t think I remember the commercials and am sadly not surprised by the behavior, save for it being so far ahead of its time as noted.
My grandpa worked for a division of Beatrice for years, bought by Kerry Ingredients in the late 80’s. There was one Christmas where my grandpa had closed a big deal for flavoring on popcorn that people get in those holiday tins. We all got our own tins and Grandpa was pleased as punch that it was a hit with all the grandkids.
@producepimp I had one of those tins as my bedroom trashcan for a decade or so.
@dave @producepimp they made awesome trashcans!
WORKER BEES! HERCULES! TURKEY GREASE! AWESOME!
@producepimp When I was a kid, we bought chips in those big tins. I think the brand was Charles Chips.
Why was the clown the only one that said “Beatrice” but not have his voice audible? Did the clown have no voice? Was the register outside the range of our frail human hearing? Was he incanting something else… something sinister?
@Granite_Grizz Whatever you do, don’t play it backwards
Excellent, I love this kind of stuff. A newsletter I get called The Hustle does deep dive stories like these once a week (business only, I’m assuming you’ll cover other subjects).
If you like this kind of thing here’s my linky to join.
https://thehustle.co/join?ref=4cd8fab8f9
The “Beatrice” conglomerate seemed to try to bring recognition to them. However it also brought to light the holdings of other large conglomerates.
![:smirk_cat:](https://dj5zo597wtsux.cloudfront.net/joypixels/assets/6.6/png/unicode/64/1f63c.png)
Remember Ralston Purrina? Famous for Cat Chow and dog food, they also made cereal like Cherrrios and Chex’s, but at the time they owned Jack in the Box.
Jack in the Box’s packaging included a small Ralston Purrina logo that most people wouldn’t have noticed, but some did. We used to call Jack in the Box’s food “people chow” and debated whether the mystery meat in their tacos was actually dog food.
In 1985, shortly after the “Beatrice” incident, Ralston Purrina divested itself of Jack in the Box, partly due to the public’s concerns over a pet food company also making fast food.
Don’t worry, your beloved cat food company is still going strong, only today they are part of the Nestle conglomerate.
So go out and get your chocolate fix, and don’t forget the cat treats!
@lonocat Today that would be Mars, the company that makes Mars bars, M&Ms, 3 Musketeers, etc. They also make Pedigree dog food and Whiskas cat food. And they own the Banfield and VCA pet hospital chains, doing to locally-owned veterinary clinics what Amazon, Home Depot, and Walmart have done to locally-owned retail.
@lonocat Purina/“Purrina”
is certainly going strong in Denver, stinking up the area around it and the air on the highway as you drive by. Or as my mother once called it, “Chowina Pew.”
@lonocat Purina is still huge in St. Louis, currently the jersey sponsor for the local Major League Soccer team.
When I was a kid, we moved into a house that had a goldfish pond in the back yard. We got some goldfish and my dad went to a fish hatchery one time and came back with a huge amount of this powder called, I shit you not, Purina Trout Chow.
I think it was just the crumbs from making pet foods finely ground and bagged up. Either way it fed our fish for years, and I used to take jars of it with me to the pond to attract fish when my friends and I would go fishing. And yes, it was very stinky. The fish loved it.
More Shoddy Goods please. What a well-written, informative, and nostalgic piece of information I didn’t know I wanted. Thanks @jasontoon for doing what you do best. I assume. I don’t really know you all that well.
@ACraigL Couldn’t have said it better myself.
@ACraigL @squishybrain Aww, thanks, you guys. And you know me well enough to know I love flattery.
I am glad I am not the only one doddering around here that’s old enough to remember this shit.
I graduated from high school in 84, and will attend my <cough> 40th reunin in a few weeks.
meanwhile at Shop Rite they ask if I get the senior discount. I’m working on it, kid. Just 7 years and 3 months to go.
some one shoot me, please.
@ekw always say yes to the senior discount
@ekw Heh. I graduated in 1970 - at the age of 16. As the VietNam War clusterfuck was drawing to a close, my draft number came within 90 days of making me move to Canada or Sweden.
As for Beatrice, I recall the ads, and I remember the exact “Yeah, so what?” reaction cited.
Has anyone done an extended analysis of how the tobacco-company buyouts of Kraft and Nabisco got undone? I know that in the case of RJR Nabisco, the company got bought in a massive LBO by a group which then decided that tobacco was a bad business to be in, so they spun the bones of RJReynolds back out. Nabisco has never gone back to being a company unto itself.
And then there’s Sears, possibly the most stunning example of a serial clusterfuck in commercial history.
@werehatrack Oh man, there’s a great book about the '70s-'80s Sears clusterfuck, The Big Store, by Donald Katz (who later founded Audible).
I remember that being the first time we became aware of huge corporate conglemarates. I also remember hearing people jokingly saying things like “We’re all just another fine product… from Beatrice.”
In the ‘80s there was a series of ads for Energizer batteries — the tagline at the time was “the extraordinary Energizer” (this was just before the bunny as I recall), and the ads had a guy dressed up as what I guess was supposed to be a surfer type (tank top, blond crew-cut, kinda tan-ish) with an Australian accent yelling at the viewer through the whole commercial. Apparently sales actually dropped because people didn’t like being yelled at by a brand spokesperson. (You can watch it here: https://www.tiktok.com/@uncleducky80/video/7275505938486824235)
The other notable one that aired in the late ‘80s was the “not your father’s Oldsmobile” ad campaign. The tagline entered the pop culture lexicon but the ads themselves, besides being downright weird, are considered by some to have directly led to the death of the nameplate because people wanted their father’s Oldsmobile, so they were in a sense saying “we’re taking away everything you like about our brand!”
@kensey That guy was an Australian football star! Mark “Jacko” Jackson. Still very well-known here.
@kensey Everyone in my family and circle of friends loved those commercials with Jacko! (And we are not Australian.) Those spots earned him enough notoriety to be cast in the NBC series “The Highwayman”.
@kensey oh wow you are reminding me of two things:
As someone who wasn’t yet born when the company was dissolved, and had never even heard its name (in this context), I spent half the newsletter trying to decide whether this was fact or some kind of invented history!
Not to make anyone feel old.
Thanks for the newsletter; I look forward to the next one!
@agnesnutter I was thinking the same thing. The first thing that came to mind was Steve Holt from Arrested Development yelling, “BEATRICE!” while throwing both fists in the air.![:joy:](https://dj5zo597wtsux.cloudfront.net/joypixels/assets/6.6/png/unicode/64/1f602.png)
@agnesnutter @CzarCastic Or Sylvester Stallone anxiously looking around while yelling it…
I read it I enjoyed it. I’ll read the next one too.![:blush:](https://dj5zo597wtsux.cloudfront.net/joypixels/assets/6.6/png/unicode/64/1f60a.png)
Speaking of old commercials, remember EF Hutton?
This was awfully good, and I hope you’ll stick with the new newsletter.
@mci Thank you!
didn’t read through the newsletter, just wondering if Toon is still In Melbourne, or if he’s come back to the states?
@earlyre Still in Melbourne, but my heart will always be in south St. Louis.
@JasonToon wow! a reply from the man himself!
good on ya!
@earlyre @JasonToon Wow, this explains why the sales are seasonally appropriate in the US. For real, who ever expected pool toys on Meh in the summer. Now at least we understand the winter/summer confusion…
I remember seeing those Beatrice ads and thinking “Why?”. At 20 I was very aware that large corporations owned familiar brands, and couldn’t think of a single reason they would out themselves like that.
Thank you for the deep dive! I remember the ad campaign, and of course the nation’s collective “WTF?” But I did not know any of these details, so I really appreciated this.
I can’t remember if it was that year or the next, but I took a very good class in high school called “Global Issues”, and we had a unit on conglomerates. I learned a great deal about other hiding-in-plain-sight organizations like Castle & Cooke, Nestle (which had an evil reputation even in the 80s!), and even Sara Lee. (The sponge cake company also had businesses in the defense industry.)
About 40 odd years ago I went to Commercial Art School (Now these young whippersnappers call it Graphic Design School). We used to call this “Industrial Advertising.” Where one doesn’t sell a specific product, just an image, hopefully positive, i.e. Exxon: “we love clean air and our scientist are working hard all the time to make petroleum products not do nasty shit.” With pictures of lots of happy families, puppies and pretty young people in lab coats looking at beakers. Corporations spend millions on this crap and yes, it works. Sigh. Oh, I have one, just one client left and now I do stained glass. Retired from a university as a “graphics designer.”
Is this why I saw something from hello@meh in my inbox this week?
Was there really a time in history when a clown like that wasn’t terrifying?
Great newsletter!! Wish this was a daily feature, but I’m greedy like that.
Just goes to show that corporate executives really are people just like us. Dangerously untethered from reality
@uninflammable I resemble that remark.
I liked the Beatrice race car.
Do. Want.
Love this!
Now do “New Coke”. And Sears. And Elon the Muskrat.
This reminds me of the similarly confusing ads from a few years later for BASF. The “we don’t make the thing…” ones. Like the Beatrice ones, they didn’t sell a product, just a corporation.
Dave Barry parodied them as “we don’t make the TV, we don’t make the cables you plug into your TV, we make the little plastic thing that holds the cables you plug into your TV together”
I always saw ads like those from Beateice from giant companies like BASF or ADM on Sunday news shows my mom would watch. I always assumed they were aimed at wealthy dudes with extra money to dump in the stock market, and that’s what Beatrice was doing too.