General Mills Takes Home the Gold at Edison Awards

Betty Crocker Gluten Free Dessert Mixes Wins the 2010 Edison Best New Product Award in the Consumer Packaged Goods Food Segment

Last night General Mills Betty Crocker Gluten Free Dessert Mixes won gold at the 2010 Edison Best New Product Awards gala in New York. The product took first place in the consumer packaged goods food segment.

“We are thrilled that Betty Crocker Gluten Free Dessert Mixes won gold and are honored to have one of the strongest brand icons in the food industry associated with one of America’s greatest inventors,” said Jodi Benson, Baking R&D and transformational business development director for General Mills. “It has been extremely rewarding to welcome gluten free consumers back to Betty Crocker through this innovative line of products.”

Betty Crocker was the first nationally recognized brand to launch gluten free brownie, cookie and cake mixes in traditional grocery stores. The products satisfy gluten free consumers’ previously unmet desire to find great-tasting, affordable and easy-to-prepare desserts that they can enjoy with their families and friends.

Since the gluten in wheat flour provides the structure for traditional brownies, cookies and cakes, creating dessert mixes without gluten is a significant and remarkable technical achievement. Once the company successfully created a winning product, an insightful marketing campaign centered on social media drove both awareness and support for the launch.

Benson notes the critical role General Mills suppliers played in the development of the product: “General Mills embraces a connected innovation model in product development. This model results in us looking inside and outside of the company to share ideas and technologies. We are grateful to our partners who helped us on this journey.”

The 2010 Edison Awards honor a variety of innovative products – from baking mixes to wind turbines – with gold, silver and bronze winners in each of its 11 product categories.

“The Edison Award winners are the moving parts in the engine of economic growth,” said Sarah Miller Caldicott, great grandniece of Thomas Edison and chairperson of the Edison Awards steering committee. “They inspire people to think outside the box, and their results improve the lives of people around the world.”

The Edison Best New Product Awards are given annually. The awards are a peer-review honor similar to the Oscars and are voted on by roughly 2,000 members of the not-for-profit Marketing Executives Networking Group, which includes America’s top executives and academics. The awards symbolize the persistence and excellence personified by Thomas Alva Edison, inspiring America’s drive to remain in the forefront of innovation, creativity and ingenuity in the global economy.

About Betty Crocker
Since her creation in 1921, Betty Crocker has been one of the strongest brand icons in the food industry. A brand associated with quality and trust, Betty Crocker and the red spoon symbol appear on more than 300 General Mills products including ready-to-spread frostings and mixes that make some of the country’s best cakes, brownies, cookies, muffins and other baked goods. As a pioneer in the dessert mix category, General Mills was one of the first companies to introduce layer cake mix in 1947; it did so under the Betty Crocker name. This started a revolution in baking, providing homemakers with a convenient, reliable way to replicate the quality and taste of “homemade” without the hassle.

About General Mills
One of the world’s leading food companies, General Mills operates in more than 100 countries and markets more than 100 consumer brands, including Cheerios, Häagen-Dazs, Nature Valley, Betty Crocker, Pillsbury, Green Giant, Old El Paso, Progresso, Cascadian Farm, Muir Glen and more. Headquartered in Minneapolis, Minnesota, USA, General Mills had fiscal 2009 global net sales of US$15.9 billion, including the company’s $1.2 billion proportionate share of joint venture net sales.