Saturday, October 23, 1999
Elsie the Cow changed industry's image
Ad Age ranks icon among century's best
BY MARK WILLIAMS
The Associated Press
COLUMBUS — Sixty years after being drawn to her bright eyes and raised ears, Jim Cavanaugh is still in love with Elsie the Cow.
“Anytime anything happens with Elsie, it makes my heart beat,” said Mr. Cavanaugh, the man who picked the first spokescow for Borden dairy products, in 1939 at the World's Fair in New York.
Since then, Elsie — with her trademark daisy necklace, long eyelashes, brown eyes and motherly image — has become a marketing standard. This year, Advertising Age magazine ranked Elsie 10th in its list of advertising icons of the century.
“There is something about cows as being motherly and peaceful,” Roger Blackwell, an Ohio State University marketing professor and retailing consultant, said Friday. “People, especially children, respond to them, so Elsie was the perfect symbol for” Borden.
Mr. Cavanaugh, retired secretary of the American Jersey Cattle Association in Columbus, will be among those returning to New York on Tuesday to celebrate her 60th birthday.
Borden created Elsie before the fair, as one of several cartoon cows in a campaign to change the poor image of dairy processors, according to Elsie's history.
The ads appeared in medical journals, and doctors loved them so much that they asked for reprints to hang on office walls. By 1939, Elsie began to appear in national magazines and on radio.
Then, at the World Fair, Borden had an exhibit of automated machines milking 150 cows a day. Visitors wanted to know which one was Elsie.
Mr. Cavanaugh was a college student from Kansas who had been chosen to care for the cows. A Borden executive asked him to help pick a real Elsie.
They settled on a 7-year-old Jersey from Brookfield, Mass., named You'll Do, Lobelia.
“This one caught our attention because she always looked alert,” Mr. Cavanaugh said. “Her ears were always up.”
Elsie was an immediate hit, making appearances along the East Coast and going to Hollywood in 1940 to appear in the movie Little Men as a cow named Buttercup. She also was used for charitable events and helped sell $10 million in bonds during World War II.
Borden picked her bull husband, Elmer — the trademark for Elmer's Glue — to take her place at the fair in 1940 until Elsie could return. The couple had their first calf that year, Beulah, and a second calf, Beauregard, in 1947.
There have been 29 Elsies, all the tan-colored Jersey. Mr. Cavanaugh, 82, helped pick out other Elsies, including the one used in the 1964 World's Fair in New York and one that appeared in the Rose Parade. The first Elsie was killed in a truck accident in 1940.
The current Elsie lives with handler Steve Bradley in Krum, Texas, about 40 miles northwest of Dallas.
Borden Inc. is no longer in the dairy business. It sold its milk, ice cream and cultured products business in September 1997, and its cheese business to Dairy Farmers of America of Kansas City, Mo., in January 1998.
Borden retained ownership of the Borden brand and Elsie but licensed the use of both to the new owners.
Mr. Blackwell said Elsie was once as popular as Mickey Mouse, but Borden didn't invest in keeping her as strong a symbol as other company figures such as the Morton Salt umbrella girl. Finding Elsie in the supermarket has become harder, he said.
“Borden sold off great brands ... and icons such as Elsie to those who probably recognize the value of the brands and, with the right kind of effort, can bring them back,” Mr. Blackwell said.
The Dairy Farmers' American Dairy Brands division in Columbus, which is organizing Tuesday's bash, will use Elsie to promote products made for the $5 billion-a-year cheese industry by the 25,000 dairy owners in the cooperative.
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