Oh hey everybody.
This week on Ask Cristen Fiona Fox 18 wants to know why is yogurt specifically marketed
to women?
To which I say obviously our uteruses just require sour dairy in order to menstruate
not to mention those tiny chocolates with the little inspirational sayings on the inside.
What I’m about to say might be one of the nerdiest things on Stuff Mom Never Told You
but I really don’t care because honestly the marketing history of yogurt is downright
fascinating.
Yogurt the product has really lived the American dream because when it first showed up on the
East Coast of the US in the 1920s, courtesy of an immigrant was penniless.
You’re going to wait around little yogurt for World War II to roll around and the guy
who started Dannon, yeah that Dannon, comes over from Western Europe where he’s like,
‘I’ve got to get away from all of this military action and get all these Americans
to start eating yogurt.
Why do I already have New York accent, I don’t even know, I guess I’m kind of an early
adopter.’
And this Dannon guy was convinced that Americans would love yogurt during World War II because
we had a meat shortage and he was like, ‘Oh, you know what has a lot of protein?
Soured dairy products.’
And of course Americans were like, ‘Get that outta here with your french fries, I
don’t like it, give me a hotdog full of nitrates any day before I eat that stuff.’
Then after World War II old Dannon’s sour luck turned sweet when he essentially invented
fruit on the bottom yogurt, at which point Americans were like, ‘Oh, this is sweet
enough now, I’ll take some yogurt thank you very much.’
But of course since this is the late 1940s, Dannon isn’t trying to get women to eat
yogurt he’s just trying to get anybody to eat yogurt.
Yogurt really started coming straight for our ovaries so to speak in the 1970s when
America came down with yogurt fever.
A staple of the era’s health food and fitness craze, yogurt popped up in the pages of Vogue
in 1972 as a recommended diet food.
Then in 1977 goes big with one of the most famous advertising campaigns in television
history in which Dannon sells yogurt with old people.
‘In Soviet Georgia there are two curious things about the people: a large part of their
diet is yogurt and a large number of them live past 100.
89 year old Bagrad Depogua liked Dannon so much he ate two cups.
That pleased his mother very much.’
And those old people were so effective at selling yogurt that in 1978 New York Magazine
declared and I quote, ‘Yogurt has gone legitimate.’
And by 1982, yogurt sales still hadn’t soured considering how the New York Times reported
and I quote, ‘Yogurt is chic.’
So chic that Kellogg’s tried to launch an ultra-premium yogurt around that time called
‘Whitney.’
[Singing] ‘And I will always love you.’
By the 1990s yogurt sales have gone up 120% since 1975 and 86% of all of those yogurt-eaters
are women.
So what does big yogurt do?
It starts really honing in on it’s female demographic saying screw all the people who
aren’t eating yogurt, we don’t need them.
Let’s just get women to eat more yogurt and the way we get women to eat more yogurt
is by convincing them that it really is their ideal diet food that can both help them achieve
the American dream of having a really thin waist and also achieve the feminine dream
of eating something that feels kind of like dessert without feeling psychological guilt
for it for the next week.
Just consider some of the early 90s yogurt taglines, like Weight Watchers yogurt that
promised total indulgence but zero guilt.
With Light and Lively, you could eat smart and look it.
Yoplait said, ‘Do it for you.’
And you know what?
We did.
So to answer our original question of why yogurt is marketed specifically to women,
basically because diets and beauty standards and women really like yogurt.
And yogurt bas been pretty much all about the ladies ever since.
Until those like brogurt brands that have popped up in the past couple of years that
are like, ‘Men, these packages are black and this contains a lot of protein.
Also the strawberries in here we promise are manly.’
So Fiona Fox 18, I hope you enjoyed this marketing history of yogurt as much as I obviously did.
I would now, if there are any filmmakers watching, I’m interested in bringing the story of
yogurt’s American Dream to life, so if anyone wants to script-write with me, maybe pitch
this thing around, I think this yogurt’s got lets.
But now I want to know from you, dear viewers, what kind of ridiculously, unnecessarily gendered
products have you noticed?
Let me know in the comments below.
And I am curious if anyone out there has ever tried brogurt and does it taste any different
from actual yogurt?
And as always, ask me your questions so I can give you some yogurt.
Answers.