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Woke Marketing: Killing Creative
For nine months last year I earned a living working in the marketing department for a large corporation. So, technically I can call myself a marketing professional. Granted I was a number cruncher, but I am starting to think the Creative departments aren’t all that more creative than the Accounting departments.
Last year we saw the Washington Redskins cave to pressure and agree to change the name of their franchise. After months of thought they came up with a new name. The football team is now called the Football Team. The goal was to come up with something that wouldn’t offend even the wokest of their fan base and in the end, they punted.
Warning: Racist Image
Now the folks at Quaker Oats have decided to change the name of their Aunt Jemima products. Evidently, white liberals don’t want to buy food that may have been touched by a Black person . . . What, is that not the reason? Sorry, it so hard to tell the difference between woke and racist these days. Anyway, the name and image on the Aunt Jemima pancake boxes are being changed. Nothing wrong with change. So what did the marketing geniuses come up with for their packaging? The Pearl Milling Company. The new packaging is just the old packaging without the smiling face of Jemima. In other words, it is boring.
Changing logos and names, for whatever reason, is a chance to get creative and come up with something new and exciting. Why isn’t that happening? In both of these cases, the name change came about by a desire not to offend. In a society that finds away to be offended by everything, that is difficult and is easier to just be boring. Woke culture is already killing comedy, now they are trying to kill all forms of creativity. Oh well, I guess I’ll just sit back and enjoy my favorite drink . . .
White beer can with black print. Looks raciest to me.
I can recommend a soundtrack to accompany that drink:
This is actually pretty good beer.
I hoped that the woke and racist link was going to that video and you didn’t disappoint. Such a wonderful piece.
Lets have a conversation about People Of Color being underrepresented on consumer packaging. I am thinking of you Betty Crocker.
I’ll bet they have a drop in sales because those whose favorite pancake mix is Aunt Jemima won’t be able to find it. And they won’t recognize the new name. Serves them right.
I never viewed Aunt Jemima negatively or as low status or inferior in any way even in the earlier incarnation of the logo. That smiling woman was making something good and pure. Something special. Now I’m looking at a mill and machinery and I’m reminded that this isn’t actually maple syrup anymore let alone syrup homemade by Aunt Jemima. I’m reminded that this is highly processed high fructose corn syrup.
There is only a token amount of black. That’s tokenism.
Beer does not care what color you are. All mammals are improved by beer. Hell, I’ve known birds that flourished on beer.
I’m winding down from my hectic day with a Hibernation Ale, from Great Divide Brewing Co. It would taste just as good if it came in a generic can. Or a black can. Just so it isn’t pink.
Yes that was a racist remark. Lefties, knock yourselves out. ‘Cause in a year or so, it’ll be guys that look like
meyour neighbor knocking you out.Aunt Jemima is racist? Showing this face of this friendly and warm and inviting person is problematic to you for some reason?
Okay, no problem. It’s a free country. But could you please go vent your spleen over there in the corner, away from the children? We’re all here together enjoying some wonderful pancakes, happily imagining that this wonderful woman made them for us. She looks like she knows what she’s doing, and everything at her table is suffused with love and wholesomeness.
You have some issue because she’s black? Um. srlsly?? Dude.
Listen. Vent and rage for a while. When you calm down, we’re going to bring you over some pancakes, see if we can help you through this thing. It’s all going to be okay.
Not that there’s anything wrong with that.
We used to get this in the ’70s. The beer we bought happened to be made by Falstaff Brewing Co., but it could have been anybody.
HAHAHAHAHAHA!!!
No, seriously. What was Yer point again?
One nice benefit of this nonsense is that my husband and I discovered and now enjoy Plugra butter. Great stuff, even available at Walmart and not terribly expensive. I’d used Land O Lakes butter all my life. When they took the Indian girl off the box, I quit. Looked for better and found it. Steven agrees, so now we’re both using Plugra. Kerrygold, from Ireland, is also good, but more expensive. Plugra is US made, too.
I grew up on Aunt Jemima pancake mix (and Log Cabin syrup). My mother cooked them in butter. Yum. Once I learned how to cook, it was pancakes from scratch and Vermont maple syrup. Still, loved the lady on the box. Uncle Ben, too. Fond memories. Damn these ultra-PC history-rewriting idiots!
I remember my fury at Log Cabin when they cut back on the maple content of their syrup. There was a bad year for maples in New England, and Log Cabin actually said they were cutting the percentage due to that, but that it’d be back. Evidently sales continued at an acceptable level, because they kept their syrup’s mapleness at the reduced level, or perhaps less. They betrayed me.
They were way ahead of you. WaPo, 1996:
They morphed dozens of faces together to create an American composite.
Here’s what galls me about the Aunt Jemima thing: the name probably had to go, given its racist origins. Using “Aunt” or “Uncle” with a first name was a condescending and paternalistic way of referring to The Domestics – usually intended to be friendly and affectionate, I suppose, but it was like calling all porters George. Add the whole Mammy implications and you have a relic.
So why not rebrand it as Jemima (Last Name Carefully Chosen), strip the domestic raiments, bring her into the 21st century?
Perhaps that wouldn’t be enough. An ad campaign from a few years recast Uncle Ben as the CEO of the rice company, and I guess that wasn’t enough.
Pearl River. Means nothing.
I fail to understand just what is racist about Aunt Jemima. Or Uncle Bens. I think that will go too. I guess I’m just not woke enough.
This was the most recent incarnation of Aunt Jemima. Aside from her name, what about her didn’t appear to be part of the 21st century? She looked like a happy, successful businesswoman to me – the kind of woman you’d want your children to emulate, no matter what your skin color might be. Personally, I don’t understand why they didn’t just keep the picture, drop the Aunt part, and simply go with Jemima’s.
Eating “food” in Repo Man (1984).
The funny thing is they market all most all commercial Barbecue sauces as having a secret recipe invented by Working Class Black Men, usually from a rural or southern background. No one wants a Barbecue Sauce concocted by a Swedish Woman from Minneapolis.
I never understood this whole “Using “Aunt” or “Uncle” with a first name was a condescending and paternalistic way of referring to The Domestics”. I am not sure where everybody is from but we did not have “domestics”. Aunt and Uncle was used close adult family friend members. Never in my life did I associate it with racism until recently. This retro history or finding a small groups definition and expanding it out to everybody gets exhausting.
I am tired of being beat on and blamed for things I did not do and did not know about.
It’s a conspiracy with Ann Page . . .
The thing that kills me is many years ago, the did change the face from a “Mammy” black woman to a more modern, sophisticated person. Now, even showing a black person on any product is considered racist?
I can understand why Crayola changed it’s “Flesh” colored crayon to something else, but Aunt Jemima’s smiling face made me want to buy the product more than others. The same goes with Uncle Ben and Cream of Wheat.
Yes, I think the name change is a big marketing fail. As a consumer, if I see the “Pearl Milling Company” “brand” on food packaging, I see a generic product produced by some bland corporate entity. I might as well buy the cheaper store brand or a true generic. But, if I see “Aunt Jemima,” I see some personality, a differentiation from the other brands on the shelf. If I think for a couple of seconds, I recognize that Aunt Jemima is still a product of a big corporate entity. But “Aunt Jemima” caught my attention for the second or two that often makes the difference in which product I pull off the supermarket shelf.
Me too. It’s weird too that I’m conscious that the packaging influenced my decisions instead of the product. I like these fictional people as people, not as tokens or mascots.
I was not brought up in that world, either, but I never had any trouble understanding the condescending way “Aunt” or “Uncle” was used in some cultures.
It’s not a racist sort of thing, but “Uncle” is used as an condescending honorific in Russian culture, too. You got some weird hanger-on in the family with no particular relationship to anyone, so you call him “Uncle.” It’s not necessarily mean spirited, but you need to call him something to show that he’s harmless to have around so long as he behaves himself.
In the American hospital system they show condescension a different way, when complete strangers issue orders to you and call you by your first name.
Getting an education can indeed be exhausting. You think you know everything, and then you find out there is more to learn.
And it may not have been as “condescending” as we make it out to be. In Roll Jordon Roll, the great (then Marxist but later Catholic) historian Eugene Genovese attacks the paternalist system of the slaveholders. Part of that was the sincere belief that the slaves were in fact members of the family. He quotes many, many letters, diaries, etc. that show this to be true. And as you suggest, if you have adults in your household figuring out what the children are to call them is a problem. Surely no Southern Lady wants her children to address an adult by first name without honorific. But why bother with history when only progress matters?
Meh – The WaPo used a picture of Nana Visitor. Can’t even get the graphics right.