The outrage spoke louder than money.
2020 was a year of reckoning.
Companies with images and brands rooted in racism had to rethink their values.
They also had to listen to the public.
Many of these images had been contentious for quite a long time.
Companies had stopped listening, but they should have studied history.
The Frito Bandito had been vanquished years before.
He was an animated mascot for corn chips in created in 1967 to promote Frito Lay’s corn chips.
The character was a racist stereotype.
He was depicted as a Mexican bandit that always was trying to steal your corn chips.
- You know the song. I know you do.
It’s one of those irritating tunes that won’t leave your head once you’ve heard it.
The national Mexican American anti-defamation committee in the U.S. objected to this characterization of Mexicans as sneaky bandits and they complained. For years.
Frito Lay tried to clean the bandit up, removing his mustache, then his guns.
- The advertising was so successful, the company was reluctant to pull it.
So the committee sued them for 610 million dollars, 100 dollars for every Mexican American they’d offended.
There was so much bad press around the lawsuit, the company started to lose money.
So in 1971, they pulled the campaign.
Eskimo Pies
This brand existed for almost 200 years.
In 1820 a store owner had the idea to put chocolate and icecream together.
He created a new type of ice cream bar and he and a partner started manufacturing and selling them.
They wrapped the product in foil packaging and named them Eskimo Pies. They were granted a patent for the product.
- It was so successful they were constantly copied. They couldn’t cover the cost of defending the patent so they sold it to RS Reynolds, the packaging company.
- Eventually, the brand was sold to Dreyers Grand Ice Cream
In 2020, Eskimo Pies collided with the Black Lives Matter movement and the indigenous people of the north.
Indigenous people had raised many objections to the use of the word Eskimo in the past.
- It was used by colonizers to refer to savages that ate raw meat.
In June 2020, the company announced they would retire the Eskimo Pie name.
- They also removed the image of the dark-skinned child in a parka that is on the packaging.
- They acknowledged it was derogatory and indicated they wanted to be part of the solution.
They’ve changed the name to Edys Pie, after Joseph Edy, a founder of Dryers Brand icecream.
The story of Aunt Jemima.
This product was created by a company that was looking for another way to sell flour.
After experimentation, they came up with a ready to go pancake mix.
Then they saw a minstrel show — Old Aunt Jemima.
To them, the old black woman wearing an apron represented kitchen know-how and hospitality.
RT Davis Mill and Manufacturing Company obtained the trademark and changed their name to the Aunt Jemima Mills Company.
The first woman to act as Aunt Jemima for the company was born a slave in 1834.
- She was paid to act the part, but she didn’t receive any royalties from the sales of the product.
- In 1926, the company was sold to Quaker Oats.
The Aunt Jemima ads were some of the most popular ads of that time.
An entire generation of white children grew up with the ads, thinking nothing of it.
Over the years, there were complaints from the black community, especially in the ‘60s.
- In 1989 Quaker decided to update the packaging in an attempt to appease the objections.
- Aunt Jemima’s hair and clothing were modernized, reducing the stereotypical look and feel of the image.
Then came May 2020 and the death of George Floyd.
A Tiktok video objecting to the brand got over 2 million views.
That was powerful enough to get their attention.
In June 2020, Quaker announced they would change the name and remove the image.
- They acknowledged the old image was based on a racial stereotype.
- They pulled their entire Aunt Jemima line, which was a major part of their branding.
The brand donated 5 million dollars to create meaningful conversations to engage the black community.
The parent company, Pepsi, announced a 400 million dollar initiative to lift up black communities and increase representation.
This company erased 100 years of branding history and donated millions of dollars to the community.
- Each of these companies either replaced or removed the offensive branding at great cost.
In every case, the public had voiced their objections for years, to no avail.
The death of George Floyd caused an outcry that they could no longer ignore.
It took a public injustice to make the change.
Change is possible when the sound of our combined social outrage becomes louder than the sound of money.