Häagen-Dazs
May 7th, 2008Sometimes all it takes is one brilliant idea. Reuben Mattus (1913-1994) was a Polish immigrant who began his career peddling his family’s ice cream from a horse-drawn wagon. After more than 30 years of selling his wares on a small scale to restaurants and stores in the Bronx, Reuben noticed something about American consumers. They wanted good ice cream, but they also wanted something exotic.
So Reuben put on his thinking cap and came up with the name “Häagen-Dazs” for his new line of premium, high-fat ice cream. Although it sports an umlaut and sounds Scandinavian, the name “Häagen-Dazs” is pure nonsense — it doesn’t actually mean anything in any known language. But consumers took the bait, and “Häagen-Dazs” was an immediate hit with everyone (except dieters, of course). An ironic footnote: Hedging his bets after he sold Häagen-Dazs to Pillsbury in 1983, Reuben Mattus went on to develop and market “Mattus’ Lowfat Ice Cream.”
May 24th, 2008 at 3:39 pm
Actually, Mattus hired an ad firm to come up with Haagen Dazs. I can’t remember the gentleman’s name but I had the distinct pleasure of hearing the entire tale during a talk this Ad man gave at Syracuse University sometime in the years 1999-01. Incredibly truncated story as follows: He described an “ice cream war” between Bryers and Sealtest. They were underselling each other at something like 10 cents a gallon. Mattus approached the Ad firm to help him as he could not compete with these two giants. Part of the genius of hagen dazs was to say it was gourmet, up the buttermilk(fat) content, which makes ice cream so delicious, and sell it in the now familiar substantially smaller pint form for $1.29 or something. Then the ads were put up in all the corner shops and candy specialty stores in NYC. Coming soon from Europe, the most delicious ice cream in the world, Haagen Dazs. Add some gold foil like design elements to make the ice cream container more regal, and voila, Haagen Dazs.