Friday, March 30, 2007

Uncle Ben "Gets a New Identity"

Today's New York Times has a fascinating Business section cover story on Mars company's effort to reintroduce Uncle Ben's rice and side dish products to the American consumer. The article points readers to a new website, unclebens.com, where the company has repositioned Uncle Ben as the chairman of the company.

I explored the site and found a calendar on Ben's executive office desk that has him speaking to the National Institutes of Health and meeting with a Senator You-Know-Who on a Friday in March.

It is a notable transformation of a brand character that has always carried with it the baggage of racial insensitivity that has also been associated with the brand and other brands such as Aunt Jemima's pancake syrup.

The Times was right to front-page this story. As advertising reporter Stuart Elliott writes in the story:

"The previous reluctance to feature Uncle Ben prominently in ads stood in stark contrast to the way other human characters like Orville Redenbacher and Colonel Sanders personify their products. That reticence can be traced to the contentious history of Uncle Ben as the black face of a white company, wearing a bow tie evocative of servants and Pullman porters and bearing a title reflecting how white Southerners once used “uncle” and “aunt” as honorifics for older blacks because they refused to say “Mr.” and “Mrs.”

Before the civil rights movement took hold, marketers of food and household products often used racial and ethnic stereotypes in creating brand characters and mascots.

In addition to Uncle Ben, there was Aunt Jemima, who sold pancake mix in ads that sometimes had her exclaiming, “Tempt yo’ appetite;” a grinning black chef named Rastus, who represented Cream of Wheat hot cereal; the Gold Dust Twins, a pair of black urchins who peddled a soap powder for Lever Brothers; the Frito Bandito, who spoke in an exaggerated Mexican accent; and characters selling powdered drink mixes for Pillsbury under names like Injun Orange and Chinese Cherry — the latter baring buck teeth."

This will certainly add a new layer to the discussion I initiate with students in my ethnic marketing course at Johns Hopkins University.

Click [here] to read the NYT article.

Monday, March 05, 2007

Asian Americans in U.S. Pop Entertainment?

New York Times writer Mireya Navarro had a Style-section cover story in the Sunday Times that delved into what some say is American pop culture's avoidance of potential Asian American stars; she writes some refer to it as "the Asian thing." It's an interesting article and worth reading.

Click [here] for the article.