R31, about “mascotization,” when Lillian Richard was the brand ambassador for Aunt Jemima, virtually every product had a mascot. Some were real people, some were drawings of people, like Betty Crocker, some were cartoon characters. There was a period where there were a lot of human mascots that were fictional characters, like Mr Clean, and some were based on real people like Pep Boys’ Manny, Mo and Jack. Then there were cartoon-like characters like the Pillsbury Doughboy, Bob’s Big Boy, the Michelin Tire Man, Paul Bunyan and a million others. Manufacturers wanted you to see an image and think of their product.
That eventually went out of fashion. Part of the reason was that this devolved into celebrity endorsements, and some of the celebrities were found to be doing scandalous things that hurt the brand. So they moved away from it. Now it’s cartoon characters like the Energizer Bunny, that can’t get arrested for DUI.
During radio shows and the early days of television, show hosts had to read commercials for products on the air (Dinah Shore and “See the USA, in your Chevrolet!”). In that era, a product might endorse an entire show, or be very identified with a certain show, like The Colgate Comedy Hour in the 1950s on NBC TV. Chesterfield Time radio show in the 1930s and 1940s was also known as Glenn Miller’s Moonlight Serenade.
You can’t really judge the mascot issue by today’s standards. In the early days of mascots, they were so common, it would be almost every well known brand. About Aunt Jemima being racist, she was modernized over and over.
The same thing happened with Betty Crocker. They changed the image every ten years or so. At first she was a motherly housewife, eventually she became a businesswoman “food expert.” Some of the early versions were based on real models, or combinations of several people. The latest portrait version is from 1986. She was never a real person, but the first Betty Crocker was named after a then-retiring male board member, William Crocker. They picked “Betty” because it sounded friendly.
