Why Aunt Jemima Matters

This morning I made my daughter blueberry waffles.  As she plopped down to the kitchen table, yawning, I reached into the pantry and pulled out the familiar womanly shaped bottle of syrup that was on my pantry shelf.  In truth, I don’t normally buy this brand of syrup precisely because I don’t like its current brand message, but lockdown has made trips to the store less frequent and I bought what my local market had on hand, valuing my kids not complaining over racial equity (let’s just be honest here).  And it struck me that this may be one of the last few of this type of bottle.

My Facebook feed is a flurry about the rebranding of Aunt Jemima, Mrs. Butterworth, Cream of Wheat, and Uncle Ben.  Apparently, the collective avuncular quartet of happily smiling faces in our kitchens has tapped into something deeper.  And as someone who has only been alive and paying attention for the refreshed version of these icons that make them appear as though they could be my neighbors or co-workers, I will be the first to admit that the images they evoke are what I imagine the brand intends for them to evoke:  Aunt Jemima is just my loving and fleshy grandma serving me up some hot breakfast with a side of love.

But folks, that is not who she was originally created to be.

Make no mistake, Jemima was originally a house slave.  Then she got promoted to a Mammy, complete with headscarf and apron.  In fact, Michele L. Norris, of the Washington Post, writes about her grandmother having once served as a brand spokeswoman for the company, touring the country “often treated like a celebrity in small towns, but could not stay in local hotels…You see, in those days Aunt Jemima didn’t look like the lady you see on the box today. She was a slave woman, and Ione (her grandmother) was expected to act and talk like a slave woman…” In the 60s, Jemima’s headscarf was replaced with a headband and in 1989, her rebrand graduated her from the help to the suburban housewife with pearl earrings and lipstick.  So, Jemima is no longer White America’s servant, more like our token Black friend we all mention when explaining why we aren’t racist.  Heck, I might even mention to you my own great-grandmother was actually named Jemima, and my Black children notwithstanding, I am White.

And to be clear, we love our Aunt Jemima pancakes, our Mrs. Butterworth syrup, and Uncle Ben’s rice.  What is not to love about their convenient carby goodness?  The products themselves are not the issue; the messaging of the branding is.  And there is a long history of marketing that promotes racist imagery. From Jemima to Chiquita to my friend Mike’s favorite NFL team, we marketers know how to wield images to evoke emotion, build trust, and promote brand loyalty.  It is not happenstance.  It is strategy.  Marketers are nothing if not strategists.

Don’t think it is all that big of a deal?  I mean sure, it is not as big of a deal as the fact that Breonna Taylor’s killers still haven’t been arrested.  But it DOES matter because a logo and brand are the product of months of deliberation.

Why does this matter?

What exactly goes into branding?

A brand is a succinct message to your target market about who your company is, why it does what it does, and why your target market should even care to choose your brand over another.  A good brand not only speaks to what a company is, but its why, its purpose.  It considers the wants and needs of the market.

(Ahem.  We don’t need house slaves, people.)

When building a brand, a marketer will ask the following questions:

• Why does your company exist?
• What is your unique selling proposition?
• What does your company value?
• What “personality” does your brand have? Serious? Nerdy? Trustworthy? Playful?
• How do you want your customers to feel when they interact with your company?
• What does your company stand for?

Effective branding is authentic, consistent, and communicates the answers to all of those questions, and it is most identifiable in a logo.  A well-developed logo is the by-product of months of conversations, meetings, sketches, and presentations and is part of a larger brand strategy.  A brand’s strategy encompasses the who, what, when, where, why and how a company plans on communicating its messages.  And these messages can afford to be bold.

MPWRSource Graphic and Digital Designer, Matthew McPartland states, “Brands need to be true to themselves. Brands have always stayed away from politics in fear of hurting their business, but that doesn’t need to be the case. Brands are in a position to make a difference; they have a powerful voice. They need to stay true to themselves. Having strong values, being transparent and making a difference can give you a competitive edge and makes you who you are.”

Good branding can add value causing consumers to choose the fancy packaging over the similarly created unbranded version that is less expensive.

We buy good branding.  And folks, we have been buying the trope that minorities are here to serve and entertain us for far too long.