NewsWire: 2/25/21
- Aunt Jemima has been rebranded as Pearl Milling Company, but a new poll suggests that this isn’t going to affect sales much. Of the 66% of consumers who've heard of the change, most (43%) say it won’t have any effect on whether they buy the product. (Advertising Age)
- NH: Last June, amid the nationwide protests over George Floyd’s death, Quaker Oats announced that its Aunt Jemima line of breakfast foods would be rebranded to make “progress towards racial equality.” The new packaging was unveiled this month, complete with a new name: Pearl Milling Company. (This is a historical reference to the predecessor Missouri firm that first introduced self-rising pancake mix in 1889.)
- According to a new poll, however, this isn't likely to move the sales needle much.
- Fully 66% of consumers say that they are aware of the change. But only 23% say it would make them more likely to buy the brand. In fact, a slightly larger share of consumers (28%) say that the update would make them less likely to buy it. The biggest share of those polled (43%) said the change won’t have any effect on their purchasing decision. Many of these presumably have never bought the product and have no intention of doing so in the future.
- Consumers are about evenly split on whether brands with controversial names should get makeovers. Fully 51% say they shouldn’t, while 49% say they should. Demand is somewhat higher among people of color, with 63% of black consumers and 61% of Hispanic consumers supporting rebranding versus 42% of white consumers. The support for rebranding is also highest among consumers under 35 and decreases moving up the age ladder.
- Yet other polls indicate that even supporters’ feelings are not wholly positive. Nearly two-thirds of 18- to 35-year-olds think such brands should change--but 61% of the same age group also think brands are being too politically correct. Even the majority of black respondents agreed. As several other surveys have made abundantly clear, Americans desire to be sensitive is balanced by their aversion to anything smacking of political correctness. (See "Almost Everyone Hates P.C. Culture" and "America Reviles Political Correctness.")
- Bottom line: Americans hold contradictory opinions when it comes to this sort of rebranding. Most consumers in every age bracket say that they’d miss Aunt Jemima if the brand went away, including some who say it should be rebranded.
- Corporations are being tugged in two different directions. They’re under pressure to euthanize brands that are considered racially insensitive, but they are replacing them with anodyne alternatives few buyers seem enthusiastic about. Pearl Milling Company won’t offend anyone, but it also isn’t going to win many loyal fans. Rebranding helps companies appear sensitive to consumers, but a large share of the consumers advocating for these changes personally believe that they go too far. In an environment where brand equity is already declining (see “The Ebbing of Brand Equity”), the rush to sanitize racially inflected brands further dilutes their power or meaning among consumers. They can’t win. Either they stand behind a brand that’s seen as racist--or they back away from all racial imagery and lose many of the powerful "heritage" emotions buyers associate with the brand.
- The Aunt Jemima announcement has spurred several other well-known food brands, including Uncle Ben’s, Mrs. Butterworth’s, and Cream of Wheat, to follow suit. These rebrands are still in the works and should be unveiled in the coming months. But by then, many consumers may have moved on to some no-name private label that steered clear of controversy all along.
