The Marketing Truth Behind Häagen-Dazs
The Not So Foreign,
Foreign Sounding Ice Cream
Häagen-Dazs, an ice cream brand most of us are familiar with and can find in most bodegas, corner stores, and supermarkets. They produce ice cream bars, ice cream cakes, sorbets, frozen yogurts, and gelatos. The brand is pretty known world wide, but why?
With a name as foreign sounding as Häagen-Dazs, the brand captures our attention, and we’re drawn to their nicely and simply packaged ice cream with your most basic flavors and straightforward titles to choose from. They have 30+ different flavors which sound crazy, but after looking at them, you’ll realize they’re 30+ very common flavors.
The famous ice cream brand was started by Reuben and Rose Mattus in New York, in 1961. Reuben and Rose are two Jewish entrepreneurs who got married in 1936 and started the company together after Reuben, who worked in the family business of producing ice cream, began to develop a new kind of ice cream. The two worked well together and split the work. Reuben developed the flavors, and Rose marketed the product.
Rose was quite the marketer. Her first plan of acting was to dress up elegantly and attract customers by giving out free samples at grocery stores. After that was a success, she marketed the brand to university students and made sure that ice cream parlors in Greenwich VIllage carried the ice cream. The ice cream did very well, and the couple opened the first Häagen-Dazs in 1976.
Later, in 1983, the business was sold to the Pillsbury Company for $70 million. All throughout the brands time with Pillsbury and even after when Grand Metropolitan bought it, the Mattus’ were kept on as consultants. After selling Haagen Dazs, they launched the Mattus Ice Cream Company in 1992, where they specialized in low-fat products under the name, Mattus' Lowfat Ice Cream. Currently, Häagen-Dazs is owned by Nestlé.
How did Häagen-Dazs get their name?
Reuben Mattus, sat at a kitchen table for hours coming up with the most random and made up words until he finally found a combination he liked. That name was Häagen-Dazs, and Rueben chooses it due to it sounding Danish and that the name was unique and original, but the name is not Danish and didn’t have any meaning before its creation. Mattus believed that Denmark was very well known for its dairy products and had a positive image in the United States, which would help their brand profit. Reuben and Rose even included a map of Denmark on early ice cream labels to help forward the idea and meaning behind it.
In 1980, the company tried to sue another ice cream brand that had been using similar foreign strategies like Häagen-Dazs. Frusen Glädjé, a now extinct ice cream, choose the name as it meant “frozen delight” in Swedish. The lawsuit was unsuccessful, and since then Frusen Glädjé was sold many times until it finally disappeared.
Häagen-Dazs is currently the second most popular ice cream, with more than 50 flavors now, some being seasonal and based on events. They recently released a line of new flavors as well, and the company has been doing well since the start, thanks to their new and creative marketing strategies.