Racism is a hot topic this year and legacy brands want to be seen as being culturally sensitive to its consumers. These companies have announced that they're changing their racial stereotype product images of certain branded products:
- PepsiCo / Quaker Oats North America
- Aunt Jemima (product features a black woman)
- Mars Inc
- Uncle Ben's (logo features a black man)
- B&G Foods - Cream of Wheat (logo features a black chef)
- Conagra Brands
- Mrs. Butterworth's (a matronly-shaped bottle since 1961)
- Land o' Lakes - changed its almost 100-year old logo earlier this year to replaced the focal image of a Native American woman with the text "farmer owned"
Do you think brands are overreacting to public sentiment? Why would it matter if a black man or woman is a spokesperson for a consumer product? To me, as an Asian consumer, these products don't appear to have a sinister, racist motive for featuring African Americans in their product packaging.
If there were really such a fervor over racism on branded packaging, why then are Aunt Jemima and Mrs. Butterworths the two most popular syrup brands by product revenue? 130.59 million Americans used Aunt Jemima and 51.8 million American used Mrs Butterworths in 2019, according to Statista. 54.86 million Americans consumed Uncle Ben's rice and rice dishes in 2019 (source: Statista), yielding $11 million in annual revenue.
Frankly, I'm not sure that a logo change would help you sell more product to the demographics that already purchase the product based on other factors: price, availability, taste, quality, etc. For brands that have been around for a long time, these announcements seem more like a PR stunt than anything else. IMHO.
I suppose time will tell us if the logo rebrand has helped Land o' Lakes capture more consumer market share next year when they celebrate their 100th anniversary.
