We Own You: Blog # 8 Media Hegemonies

For years, my dad worked for a company that is represented by one of the world’s most famous brand icons: Poppin’ Fresh, AKA: The Pillsbury Doughboy. I always liked the idea of this as a child, especially since it resulted in lots of Pizza Pops and other equally delicious Pillsbury products for myself. However, in 2001 Pillsbury was bought out by a former competitor: General Mills. This occurred almost 8 years ago, but I still remember it vividly. At the time it didn’t mean much to me, but to my dad and the rest of the company it would ultimately result in some major changes.

General mills might not be considered directly to be a Major Media company, but they certainly do owe most of their success to the media. Mascots for their other brands such as The Doughboy and The Jolly Green Giant have become national icons and appear anywhere from television commercials to magazine advertisements and even on satirical t-shirts. The major brands or as the General Mills website puts it: “international building blocks,” owned by the company are as follows…

·      Häagen-Dazs ice cream

·      Old El Paso Mexican meals

·      Green Giant vegetables

·      Pillsbury

·      Betty Crocker

They also own a number of market-leading local brands such as Wanchai Ferry premium dough products in China and Latina fresh pasta in Australia.

These cross ownerships can affect companies in a countless number of ways. Take my dads case for example. He ended up leaving the company for a period of time to work for Maple Leaf Meats. He ultimately returned to General Mills, because he received a more generous offer. These large brand merges can create controversy within the company that will often directly affect employees. The problem is that if one of the brands receives bad publicity or something similar it can negatively affect all other aspects of the company, but this can also work the other way with good publicity. However, there is usually a great deal of research involved when large companies decide to purchase other brands and the head powers behind such companies don’t spend millions, unless they truly believe it will benefit them.