First Paragraph (advertising) Blake

         The idea of the T.V. dinner and how it was and is advertised has not changed much until recently. Early advertising had more to do with how the package looked and not mass media. The genius in the advertising was to link the dinners with the latest craze of the day, TELEVISION! The package would resemble a T.V. right down to the knobs.The individual compartments would get most people excited about this new dinner. Betty Fussell an author said "The segmented plate was enormously powerful and The childlike packaging makes it appealing. The food is segmented, just the way we separated  food on our plates when we we're children, it's a form of comfort to us. Everything is in it's place"(qtd. in Lebeau ).  But the country's more demanding palate and corporate indifference have turned this piece of Americana into little more than a subject of wistful nostalgia (qtd. in Lauro ). By the turn of the next century sales had dramatically decreased and Swanson was bought by Pinnacle Food Corporation in 2001. With the company bankrupt a new ad campaign was put together to get the attention of the aging baby boomers and their kids. The ten million dollar ad campaign was hoping to boost poor revenue sales .Ms. Jacobs said "in the last 10 years all the big players in frozen food, from ConAgra to Nestlé, have invested heavily in product quality"(qtd. in Lauro ).    The idea of making the taste of the food was high on the list of things that were to be advertised.  Emily Eisnitz management director for Foote , Cone & Belding in New York,  said "Pinnacle has invested $10 million in product improvements for the Swanson dinners and has added trendy new dinners like Mesquite Chicken with Santa Fe Rice and Beans".(qtd. in Lauro ) They also started using brand names like Tyson . The initial commercial has a well dressed beautiful rich women. She is walking around her mansion and ends up leaning over the railing of her grand staircase. The next scene shows her open the T.V. dinner and breathing in the new delicious food and to top it all off she likes her tray clean in the end. The voice over says even though Swanson is now chic , T.V. dinner etiquette still applies. This advertising method is not being well received by critics, consulting groups, or professor's of business. The seventy percent of dinners are being  prepared by women and Pinnacle is hoping by making dinner a little more simple they can lure them back to the T.V. dinner side.


                                                         Works Cited

 Lauro, Patricia Winters. "The Media Business: Advertising; A $10 million campaign for Swanson focuses on the new, fashionable TV dinner." NYTIMES.com. The New York Times. 30 Oct. 2002. Web. 06 Apr. 2021.

 Lebeau, Mary Dixon. "At 50, TV dinner is still cookin'." The CHRISTIAN SCIENCE MONITOR 10 Nov. 2004. Web. 06 Apr. 2012