Here’s a delayed reaction to the Women’s Equality Party advertisement spotlighted in a previous post.
The responsible agency—Quiet Storm in the UK—purports to being an inclusive and culturally competent firm, yet can’t help but wonder about the thinking behind the concept.
After all, Mahatma Gandhi said, “Poverty is the worst form of violence.” To make light of people experiencing poverty and hunger with candy bar references is insensitive at best—and insipid, inane, and inexcusable at least.
Okay, if Día de los Muertos Barbie was controversial, why did KFC in Spain think it was cool to run this Day of the Dead campaign? Would it not have been more appropriate to honor the dead Colonel?
This pharma campaign for a COPD treatment doesn’t show much compassion or empathy for people suffering from the disease. Wonder what the responsible creative team was smoking to hatch the concept.
This Canadian campaign for a yoga studio lacks mindfulness and sensitivity—particularly in its negative stereotyping of veterans.
PRWeek reported on a controversial social media campaign from Poundland—featuring an Elf engaging in sexual and obscene acts—that will undergo an ASA investigation. The retailer is displaying a high degree of insensitivity and ignorance, dismissing disapproving consumers as not getting the joke. Actually, Poundland deserves a pounding—and worse—for its cultural cluelessness. Forget the Elf behaving badly. Poundland is displaying bad behavior, as well as bad judgment for having approved the shit.
Poundland’s controversial Elf ‘boosted Christmas sales’ but faces ASA investigation
By John Harrington
Poundland says its controversial Elf Behaving Badly campaign drove “significant numbers of shoppers” into stores in the week before Christmas.
The retailer has reiterated that it is standing by the campaign following news that the Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) is to investigate the social media activity, saying the number of people who didn’t “get the joke” is “so small”.
The pre-Christmas social media campaign, focused on the Elf on the Shelf product, featured images of the Elf in a series of sexually themed poses.
One image involving Twinings tea (pictured above) — which had the caption “How do you take your tea? One lump or two?” — caused particular controversy. Some criticised its sexual nature, while others described it as harmless fun and fitting for the Poundland brand.
In a new trading update, Poundland said Elf Behaving Badly, as part of the retailer’s “low cost but highly effective marketing strategy”, drove “significant numbers of shoppers” into stores in the week before Christmas. More than 200,000 ‘bad elves’ were sold alongside more than one million elf accessories, the company stated.
Trading in the week to Christmas Eve was £59m, up 20 per cent on the previous year, although there was an extra day of trading in the 2017 pre-Christmas period.
The apparent success of Elf Behaving Badly, in terms of its impact on trading, poses the question of whether the campaign was justified.
80 complaints
Meanwhile, the ASA confirmed to PRWeek that it had received around 80 complaints about the Elf Behaving Badly Twitter posts.
“The general nature of the complaints is that the ads (tweets) are offensive for their depiction of toy characters and other items which have been displayed in a sexualised manner, and are unsuitable to be displayed in an untargeted medium where children could see them,” said a spokesman.
“I can confirm that we have launched an investigation.”
In a statement, Poundland described the controversy as a “storm in a tea cup” and said the complaints “contrasted with thousands of people who said they loved our naughty elf pictures — not least because it reminded them that Britain is famous for the saucy postcard and panto”, the statement said.
“We’re just pleased the number of people who didn’t get the joke is so small.”
This Lenovo video seems potentially insensitive given the increase of organized hate groups in places such as Charlottesville and beyond. Why, the Legion looks downright Klan-like with their high-tech hoods. And it doesn’t help that the creative co-conspirators include the ever-White advertising agency Ogilvy and Gentleman Scholar, a production company whose gentlemen-led staff appears to be typically exclusive.
This Mazda advertisement from Saatchi & Saatchi in Israel should have been shot down in the concept stage.
Campaign reported HP produced a holiday video featuring a deaf character that is being criticized as patronizing and clueless. Gee, HP Chief Marketing and Communications Officer Antonio Lucio will have to ask his White advertising agencies to add a section to their diversity action plans to include disabled people.
HP holiday ad starring deaf character hits sour note with disability advocates
By Kathryn Luttner
The ad strikes a pitying tone, garbles sign language and has no subtitles, note critics.
The HP film stars two brothers. One is a musician, and the other is deaf. The deaf brother can’t fully participate in his brother’s pastime, so he looks solemnly in the mirror, sulks in the bathtub and angrily plays air guitar in his bedroom. However, the guitarist brother has an HP Spectre x360 laptop, which allows him to transform their basement into a sensory overload experience. Primary-colored light bulbs shine brightly with each stroke of his guitar, giving the deaf brother the chance to “hear” the music, and he cracks a smile for the first time in the nearly three-minute commercial.
The spot, which began airing in 60-, 30- and 15-second versions in the UK and the US last week, is notable for furthering a trend among brands of featuring disabled people in advertising. A young woman with cerebral palsy jokes about her condition’s effect on her sex life in Mars’ UK Maltesers ads from AMV BBDO, and a wheelchair basketball team enjoys pints of Guinness after a game in a US ad for the beer from BBDO, New York. And Microsoft and Spotify have recently featured deaf people in their ads to emotionally demonstrate the power of their product.
But unlike those ads, which have been generally greeted with approval from disability groups, the HP commercial is rubbing some Deaf advocates the wrong way, both for the tone of its content and some glaring technical oversights.
“It’s this narrative of ‘I feel sorry for myself, I can’t hear,’ which is B.S.,” said Tari Hartman Squire, founder and CEO of disability-inclusive, strategic marketing firm EIN SOF Communications. “I believe this ad is out of touch and did not engage the Deaf community in its creation.”
Josh Loebner, director of strategy for Knoxville-based advertising agency Designsensory and owner of the Advertising and Disability blog, agrees: “I’m quite disappointed. They’re continuing to portray the stigma that because that person is disabled, there’s a pity that’s associated with disability, and I would argue that’s just not the case. Creatively, they could’ve gone beyond what they did.”
Worse, the ad slighted the very community it’s supposedly embracing by overlooking some basic factors, said the critics. “There are no captions, and the frame cuts off the signing between the two brothers,” making it impossible for Deaf people to follow the conversation, said Squire. “It’s sloppy at best, destructive at worst.”
But HP and AMV BBDO, the company’s AOR for its personal computer business, said they consulted the deaf community. Deaf actor Joshua Castille plays the main character, and the UK’s Action on Hearing Loss (formerly Royal National Institute of the Deaf) advised on the script. Signing experts taught the actor who plays the musician brother to sign, so he could create an authentic bond with Castille on set.
“Josh can’t take verbal direction, so everything had to be signed to him,” said Tom Suiter, HP Corporate Communications. “It’s a testament to his acting talent that he could take that direction so well and give as powerful a performance as he did.”
Abigail Brown, an account executive on Mars at AMV BBDO, London, expressed her appreciation of the film on Twitter last week. Although she did not work on the agency’s HP spot, she tweeted that it “brings back so many memories of being that deaf kid, trying to get what music sounds like.” Born with a genetic bone condition called osteogenesis imperfecta, Brown began losing her hearing at 8 years old and experienced severe hearing loss by the time she was 14, exactly the same time her friends started really getting into band culture.
“I remember being at a gig in Union Chapel in London and just crying because all my friends were clearly loving the music, and all I could hear was feedback from my hearing aids reacting with the sound system,” Brown said. “My favorite thing to do in a club was to turn my hearing aids off, stand next to the speakers and feel the vibrations. ‘Brothers’ is just a more dramatic, more compelling version of that experience; it demonstrates that aural sound is not the only way we can enjoy music.”
Still, Squire believes the ad is a “huge swing and a miss” from HP, one of the first companies, along with Apple and IBM, to have an accessible technology division.
That BBDO is the agency behind the offending spot surprised Squire, who considers it to be one of the most “disability-savvy” agencies. She also thinks one of the agency’s other commercials—“Learning Sign Language,” which BBDO NY made for Wells Fargo—is a model for Deaf inclusivity. That spot employed wider camera angles to allow viewers to see the signing and included captions.
Michael Kaufer, actor and director of Deaf Film Camp, agrees it’s difficult to see the sign language in the HP spot (though he was able to catch a little bit through lip-reading, he said). But he still gave the brand credit for trying. “On the positive end, it is good to have a deaf actor. If you asked me to do that role, I would do it, but I wouldn’t be comfortable,” he said, comparing it to an AA member having a shot of whiskey in an ad. Sure, feelings of self-pity occur from time to time, but it’s not the image he wants to portray.
Loebner also takes issue with the isolationism. Other than a neighborhood jog to air out his frustrations and being silently annoyed at his brother’s concert, Castille’s character is portrayed as living in a lonely, isolated world. “And it’s not just his house, it’s in the young man’s basement,” he said. “That’s what we think of. If somebody has a disability, they’re probably just in a basement. Clearly, that is not the case!”
In one scene, the deaf character is frustrated at his inability to enjoy his brother’s performance. But that, too, is out of touch with reality, said the advocates, because there’s a growing industry of interpreters at rock concerts. Kendrick Lamar and Iggy Azalea have made headlines for hiring interpreters at Lollapalooza and Austin City Limits music festivals. Metallica, the Weeknd, Tove Lo and Charli XCX have also followed suit. In March, 7UP created a “Concert for the Deaf” with EDM superstar Martin Garrix.
Loebner questions why HP and AMV BBDO opted to strike such a powerless tone: “HP really missed the mark and could’ve done a substantially better job to say, ‘You know what? We don’t want to share a story that isolates this individual that has a disability, but rather, simply, we want to show how that person can engage with a larger narrative where the person with a disability is amongst others with varying abilities at this concert.’”
This campaign from Switzerland manages to present offensive stereotypes for Blacks and Native Americans—let’s give a hand to the idiots responsible for the awfulness!
Adfreak reported Bic celebrated National Women’s Day in South Africa and wound up offending the audience with the message depicted above. It’s not the first time the pen maker has displayed cultural cluelessness or failed to woo women. Below is Bic’s Black-targeted message for National Women’s Day.
Adweek reported Vonage dropped JWT after only two years. JWT Global Business Director Ruston Spurlock claimed in a staff memo, “Following the recent departure of Vonage’s CEO, Marc Lefar, the company was asked to dramatically cut costs. As a result, in 2015, Vonage will be shifting to an agency that is more suited for their tactical needs.” Right. The decision to disconnect had nothing to do with the offensive and awful work shat out by the White advertising agency. Sorry, but continuing a relationship JWT would have been a Crazy Generous™ act on the part of Vonage.
Told to ‘Dramatically Cut Costs,’ Vonage Drops Its Lead Creative Agency, JWT
Service could switch to project-based assignments
By Noreen O’Leary
Vonage and lead creative agency JWT are parting ways, two years after the WPP agency won the business from TBWA\Chiat\Day.
The VoIP telephone service spent $123 million in 2013 and $44 million through June of this year, according to Kantar Media.
JWT declined to comment, referring calls to Vonage, where execs could not be reached.
However, in an internal agency memo, JWT’s Ruston Spurlock, global business director on the account, told staffers: “Following the recent departure of Vonage’s CEO, Marc Lefar, the company was asked to dramatically cut costs. As a result, in 2015, Vonage will be shifting to an agency that is more suited for their tactical needs.”
JWT’s relationship with Vonage, initiated in early 2013, will end in February, according to Spurlock’s email.
It’s not clear if the marketer will launch an agency review again or handle assignments on a project basis. Other shops are already working on the business, sources said. Recently, FCB Garfinkel produced a Vonage TV spot called “The Didn’t Hit.”
Metro yanks Fox TV show bus ads branded as racist, offensive to women
By Soumya Karlamangla
An advertisement for the new Fox television show “Red Band Society” was abruptly pulled from Los Angeles Metro buses Thursday after activists complained it was racist and offensive.
The ads for the series that premiered this week show actress Octavia Spencer next to the words “Scary Bitch.” Metropolitan Transportation Authority spokesman Mark Littman said the agency decided to remove the ad because that label “denigrates women.”
“That speaks for itself,” Littman said. “That was not acceptable.”
The ads, which have been up for five weeks, will be removed from 190 Metro buses as soon as possible, said Metro spokesman Dave Sotero.
The announcement was made Thursday at a Metro committee meeting where a few dozen protesters showed up to speak against the ads. Among them was Jasmyne Cannick, who said the nickname perpetuates negative stereotypes about black women.
“I don’t know if I find it more offensive because I’m black, or more offensive because I’m a woman,” said Cannick, 36. “I sometimes think our city forgets that there are black people that still live here and call Los Angeles home.”
A Fox spokeswoman said in a statement that network executives were notified Thursday morning of the concerns around the ads and “immediately offered to remove the language.”
“Metro Los Angeles ultimately decided to take down the ads, and we respect that decision,” the spokeswoman said. “We sincerely apologize if the copy was offensive to viewers.”
Littman said though the decision was made public Thursday, Metro chief executive Art Leahy had chosen Wednesday to take down the ads after hearing about the complaints. Littman said CBS Outdoor, which handles the agency’s advertising contract, usually flags possibly questionable ads for review, but these were not flagged.
Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti, who also serves on the Metro board, said at the Thursday meeting that he wanted the ads taken down, and that the agency needs to tighten its advertising policy. Garcetti requested that Metro staff report back to the board on ways to avoid a similar situation in the future, said Jeff Millman, Garcetti's spokesman.
Automotive News reported Honda had to revise a new Civic commercial after people took offense to scenes of protesters marching in front of a federal court building in the bankrupt city of Detroit. Longtime AOR RPA is apparently responsible for the spot—and after having survived a pitch that saw the Acura business reassigned to Mullen in Boston. Gee, there used to be a time when RPA produced breakthrough and award-winning work for the automaker. Actually, the time spanned over 25 years or so.
Honda tweaks national Civic ad that spotlighted Detroit’s ‘pain’
By Sean Gagnier, Automotive News
DETROIT—Honda Motor Co. has tweaked a national commercial for the Civic compact after the original spot caused an uproar in Detroit for featuring images of protesters outside of a federal court in the bankrupt city.
The spot, created by Honda’s chief advertising agency, RPA in Santa Monica, Calif., overlaid images of the bankruptcy court and protestors outside a federal courthouse in Detroit over a blues singer before moving on to show more positive images.
The commercial, entitled “Today Is Pretty Great,” began airing Jan. 8.
While the protestors and court are unrecognizable to most viewers, some Detroiters immediately identified it as the city’s Theodore Levin U.S. Courthouse.
In the updated spot, Honda removed footage of the courthouse and protesters.
The court shown in the original commercial is hearing arguments in the city of Detroit’s bankruptcy case.
The city, owing billions of dollars to creditors and faced with a slumping tax base and steady population losses, filed the nation’s largest municipal bankruptcy case in July 2013.
City employees and retirees face the prospect of wage, benefit and pension cuts as part of any bankruptcy settlement.
The Detroit News published a story on Friday about the commercial and the negative response it was receiving in Detroit. Just hours later, Honda officials told the newspaper that they would be removing the images of protestors.
“The slight change we made to the commercial simply reflects our desire to remove anything that would get in the way of our uplifting message,” Honda spokesman Steve Kinkade told Automotive News on Saturday. “The original commercial obviously was not intended to represent Detroit or the challenges experienced by the city, its people or our industry.”
The Rev. Charles Williams II, president of the National Action Network’s Michigan chapter, told the News that the original ad was a slap in Detroit’s face.
“They’re using our pain for their pleasure to promote Japanese automobiles while we are suffering in part because of the decline of American automobiles from foreign automakers,” Williams told the paper.
Kinkade said the spirit of the commercial was intended to serve as a positive expression for everyone and the “incredibly positive response” it has generated reflects these intentions.
“Honda has operations and personnel in the city of Detroit and elsewhere in the metro Detroit area and we continue to be actively engaged in a variety of community outreach activities in the city,” Kinkade said. “We’re pleased Honda is playing a role in the continued comeback of the city.”
Seems a little clueless for a Premiere Firearms Auction to mention President John F. Kennedy during the anniversary of his assassination.
French AD: Hey, I’ve got an idea. Let’s put a ceremonial Indian headdress on a wild animal.
French CD: Brilliant.
Dunkin’ Donuts apologizes for ‘bizarre and racist’ Thai ad for charcoal doughnut featuring teen girl in ‘blackface’
Dunkin’ Brands chief communications officer Karen Raskopf told the Daily News in a statement that the company is sorry for “any offense it caused” and will be pulling the campaign.
By Beth Stebner / NEW YORK DAILY NEWS
Looks like this feud was more than skin deep.
Dunkin’ Donuts — who came under fire for a “bizarre and racist” ad featured in Thailand — has issued an apology for the campaign for their new charcoal donut line.
In a statement to the Daily News, Karen Raskopf, the chief communications officer for Dunkin’ Brands, said the campaign for the dark chocolate donuts was “insensitive.”
“On behalf of our Thailand franchise and our company, we apologize for any offense it caused,” the statement continued.
“We are working with our franchaisee (sic) to immediately pull the television spot and to change the campaign.”
The campaign, featuring a stylized Thai woman with a complicated plait of black hair and blackface makeup, shows her holding a black donut with a bite out of it.
“Break every rule of deliciousness,” the slogan reads.
The Thai ad drew ire from thousands, including leading human rights watch groups, who said the campaign was deeply insensitive and indicative of vaudeville shows from the 19th and 20th centuries.
The U.S. branch of the donut chain had said they were working with the Thai branch of Dunkin’ Donuts to pull the entire campaign.
Human Rights Watch’s deputy Asia director Phil Robertson told the Associated Press: “It’s both bizarre and racist that Dunkin’ Donuts thinks that it must color a woman’s skin black and accentuate her lips with bright pink lipstick to sell a chocolate doughnut.”
Roberts had also demanded that the company offer an apology and immediately yank the print and TV campaign.
But some failed to see the controversy.
“We’re not allowed to use black paint to promote our donuts?” the company’s CEO for Thailand, Nadim Salhani, told the Bangkok Post.
“What if the product was white and I painted someone white, would that be racist? Not everyone is paranoid about racism,” Salhani, a Lebanese expatriate, said.
Her teenage daughter was the young woman featured in the campaign.
“I’m sorry, but this is a marketing campaign, and it is working very well for us.”
Dunkin’ Donuts criticized for ‘racist’ ad campaign
By Associated Press
BANGKOK - A leading human rights group has called on Dunkin’ Donuts to withdraw a “bizarre and racist” advertisement for chocolate doughnuts in Thailand that shows a smiling woman with bright pink lips in blackface makeup.
The Dunkin’ Donuts franchise in Thailand launched a campaign earlier this month for its new “Charcoal Donut” featuring the image, which is reminiscent of 19th and early 20th century American stereotypes for black people that are now considered offensive symbols of a racist era.
In posters and TV commercials, the campaign shows the woman with a shiny jet black, 1950s-style beehive hairdo holding a bitten black doughnut alongside the slogan: “Break every rule of deliciousness.”
Human Rights Watch said it was shocked to see an American brand name running an advertising campaign that would draw “howls of outrage” if released in the United States.
“It’s both bizarre and racist that Dunkin’ Donuts thinks that it must color a woman’s skin black and accentuate her lips with bright pink lipstick to sell a chocolate doughnut,” said Phil Robertson, the deputy Asia director for Human Rights Watch. “Dunkin’ Donuts should immediately withdraw this ad, publicly apologize to those it’s offended and ensure this never happens again.”
The campaign hasn’t ruffled many in Thailand, where it’s common for advertisements to inexplicably use racial stereotypes. A Thai brand of household mops and dustpans called “Black Man” uses a logo with a smiling black man in a tuxedo and bow tie. One Thai skin whitening cream runs TV commercials that say white-skinned people have better job prospects than those with dark skin. An herbal Thai toothpaste says its dark-colored product “is black, but it’s good.”
The CEO for Dunkin’ Donuts in Thailand dismissed the criticism as “paranoid American thinking.”
“It’s absolutely ridiculous,” said CEO Nadim Salhani. “We’re not allowed to use black to promote our doughnuts? I don’t get it. What’s the big fuss? What if the product was white and I painted someone white, would that be racist?”
Salhani said that the Thai franchise of Dunkin’ Donuts operates independently of the American operation and that doughnut sales have increased about 50 percent since the campaign was launched around two weeks ago, which he attributed to curiosity about the new advertisements.
“Not everybody in the world is paranoid about racism,” said Salhani, a Lebanese expatriate in Thailand who said his teenage daughter was the model featured in the campaign. “I’m sorry, but this is a marketing campaign, and it’s working very well for us.”
When Cars Assume Ethnic Identities
By Glenn Collins
Coming to a showroom near you for 2014: the first sport utility vehicle in its class equipped with a 9-speed automatic transmission. It’s also the first to offer a parallel-parking feature. And, in 4-wheel-drive models, the rear axle disconnects automatically, for fuel efficiency.
Oh, yes: its name is the Jeep Cherokee.
Hold on — wasn’t that model name retired more than a decade ago? Wasn’t it replaced by the Jeep Liberty for 2002?
Yet now, in a time of heightened sensitivity over stereotypes, years after ethnic, racial and gender labeling has been largely erased from sports teams, products and services, Jeep is reviving an American Indian model name. Why?
“In the automobile business, you constantly have to reinvent yourself, and sometimes it’s best to go back to the future,” said Allen Adamson, managing director of the New York office of Landor Associates, a brand and corporate identity consultancy.
Jeep, a division of the Chrysler Group, explained that its market research revealed a marked fondness for the name. The 2014 version, said Jim Morrison, director of Jeep marketing, “is a new, very capable vehicle that has the Cherokee name and Cherokee heritage. Our challenge was, as a brand, to link the past image to the present.”
The company says it respects changed attitudes toward stereotyping. “We want to be politically correct, and we don’t want to offend anybody,” Mr. Morrison said. Regarding the Cherokee name, he added: “We just haven’t gotten any feedback that was disparaging.”
Well, here’s some: “We are really opposed to stereotypes,” said Amanda Clinton, a spokeswoman for the Cherokee Nation in Oklahoma. “It would have been nice for them to have consulted us in the very least.”
But, she added, the Cherokee name is not copyrighted, and the tribe has been offered no royalties for the use of the name. “We have encouraged and applauded schools and universities for dropping offensive mascots,” she said, but stopped short of condemning the revived Jeep Cherokee because, “institutionally, the tribe does not have a stance on this.”
So far, marketing materials for the 2014 Cherokee model have eschewed references to, or portrayals of, American Indians and their symbols. That’s a far cry from the excesses of past years, when marketers went beyond embracing stereotyping to reveling in it. Indeed, Chrysler’s restraint seems an indication of just how much things have changed.
For decades, American Indian tribal names have helped to propel automobiles out of showrooms. Return with us now to the era when Pontiac’s sales brochures carried illustrations comparing its 6-cylinder engines to six red-painted, feathered cartoon Indian braves rowing a canoe.
Or review Pontiac’s marketing copy, which proclaimed that “among the names of able Indian warriors known to the white race in America, that of Pontiac, chief of the Ottawas and accepted leader of the Algonquin family of tribes, stands pre-eminent.” Of course, the visage of the chief was appropriated as a hood ornament.
Many other tribes were adopted as marketing tools. Long gone is the Jeep Comanche pickup truck, sold in the late 1980s, along with the Jeep Comanche Eliminator.
Certainly, American Indian names are still in the market: consider Indian motorcycles, about to resurface under yet another new owner, Polaris Industries. And Chrysler’s full-sized S.U.V., the Grand Cherokee, introduced in 1992 as a larger version of the Cherokee and still a market leader. In fact, its success was a reason for the revival of the Cherokee name for a midsize S.U.V.
American Indians have hardly been alone in the cavalcade of automobile cultural stereotyping. In the 1950s, advertising for the Studebaker Scotsman didn’t actually use the word cheapskate, but prospective buyers were informed that “when you and your family sit in your thrifty Scotsman...this great Studebaker body cradles you, your family and friends in safety.” It should be noted, though, that the Scotsman featured cardboard door panels and its hubcaps and trim weren’t chrome-plated: they were painted silver.
While there is no indication that the General Motors Viking was discontinued in the early 1930s because of protests by outraged Scandinavians, it’s a certainty that no automaker’s copy writers would dare write today that “the development of the Viking car closely parallels the development of the Viking youth in attaining manhood,” where “only those best fitted for leadership survived to contribute to the strength and superiorities of the race.”
Moreover, in the Roaring Twenties there was no apparent feminist backlash against the Little Jordan Tomboy. The cover of its 1927 advertising brochure depicted a smart, stylish woman in jodphurs and knee-length boots, clutching a riding crop. The purple marketing prose stated that “I am the Little Jordan Tomboy,” with “a thousand miles of open road before my saucy nose.”
Also hard to fathom today is the Studebaker Dictator, “Champion of its Class,” discontinued after 1937, when the rise of Hitler and Mussolini gave the model name an unpleasant odor.
In the late 1920s, the quest for association with high-profile leaders led the Windsor Autoworks in St. Louis to shamelessly place a color portrait of the Prince of Wales on its 1929 brochure for a new vehicle, The White Prince. Buckingham Palace was not amused, and expressed its displeasure.
American Indians have long opposed derogatory sports-team labels and likened fans’ use of war paint to the derogation of African-Americans with blackface. The N.C.A.A. has forbidden the use of nicknames, as well as mascots, logos, signs and band uniforms that are “deemed hostile or abusive in terms of race, ethnicity or national origin.”
In 1994, St. John’s University in New York changed the name of its sports teams from the Redmen to the Red Storm. Also gone are the Miami Redskins and the Marquette University Warriors; the Southeastern Oklahoma State University Savages are now the Savage Storm.
The Washington Redskins have resisted; so have the Atlanta Braves, opposing a name change or the discontinuation of its tomahawk chop. But the Braves’ team mascots, Chief Noc-A-Homa and Princess Win-A-Lotta, have been remaindered.
Even aside from the use of an American Indian tribal name in the Jeep Cherokee, the risks are high in the introduction of any vehicle. Automobile experts estimate the cost of renewing a nameplate like Jeep Cherokee at more than $50 million.
Why, given these risks, return to a discontinued brand? “Coming up with new names is very expensive these days,” said Mr. Adamson, the brand consultant, explaining that trademark research, focus groups and legal due diligence can be costly. The growing quest for viable names — and the third-rail of stereotypical labeling — are possible explanations for the advent of such hard-to-spell monikers as the Volkswagen Tiguan, and the growing adoption of concocted names like Acura, Elantra, Infiniti and Lexus — as well as the proliferation of alphanumeric designations.
“New models have all of these three-letter-code designations that mean nothing to me,” said Stephen W. Hayes, a Manhattan automotive historian and a collector of printed auto memorabilia, of nameplates like MKX, RX 350, F-150, 328i, QX56 and GL450 that populate the auto world. “Companies don’t name their cars as colorfully anymore.”
Nevertheless, “just the name of a brand itself is one of the most powerful marketing tools you have,” Mr. Adamson said. “Automobile brands define who you are, and Cherokee summons up rich associations.”
The Jeep Cherokee was a winner from the start, introduced in 1974 as a sport utility vehicle with the latest gadgets. Recent market research revealed that “there was so much passion behind the Cherokee,” Mr. Morrison, the Jeep marketing director, said. “What was really interesting was that people’s fondness for the Cherokee was greater than that for Liberty.”
Giving the new Jeep its old tribal name may have seemed just another acceptable risk. “Names can be polarizing, and can cause controversy, so you have to be careful,” Mr. Adamson said, but opposition to brand names has become something of a national pastime. “Anytime you introduce a name, someone will be upset.”
A name that has zero associations is even more likely to sabotage a new model’s introduction. “If you have a name that offends nobody, then you end up with a forgettable brand” that won’t cling to the memory, Mr. Adamson said.
“So,” he said, “it just won’t be sticky.”
Check out the Chief Generosity Officer in the new Vonage campaign from JWT. The advertising agency leader who approved this bullshit deserves the title of Chief Culturally Clueless Officer. It’s not right to make light of “crazy” people.
