| Author | Message | ||
     Yvettep Veteran Poster Username: Yvettep Post Number: 1839 Registered: 01-2005 Rating: N/A |
First Aunt Jemimima gets a perm and some pearls and now they done promoted Uncle Ben. We have truly arrived as a people. NYTimes article: http://www.nytimes.com/2007/03/30/business/media/30adco.html; Chairman Ben's website: http://unclebens.com/ | ||
| Chrishayden AALBC .com Platinum Poster Username: Chrishayden Post Number: 4022 Registered: 03-2004 Rating: N/A |
I'd have a picture of the Negro with a do rag and a hideous gold platinum and diamond grille. | ||
| Cynique "Cyniquian" Level Poster Username: Cynique Post Number: 8139 Registered: 01-2004 Rating: N/A |
Why don't they just dump Uncle Ben and replace him with a symbol more associated with rice like, ummm, say, - Uncle Confuscius, a smiling fawning Asian, declaring: "Me, likee rice. You likee, too, if you go out and by a box of Foo Man Choo!" | ||
| Yvettep Veteran Poster Username: Yvettep Post Number: 1840 Registered: 01-2005 Rating: N/A |
LOL @ Cynique. Yeah, that's it: replace one outdated stereotype for another! Well, maybe Uncle Ben will see to it, seeing as he's now the big man at the company! Seriously, though, this move is very strange and the whole campaign just creeps me out. This section was key in the Times piece: “This is an interesting idea, but for me it still has a very high cringe factor,” said Luke Visconti, partner at Diversity Inc. Media in Newark, which publishes a magazine and Web site devoted to diversity in the workplace. “There’s a lot of baggage associated with the image,” Mr. Visconti said, which the makeover “is glossing over.” Uncle Ben, who first appeared in ads in 1946, is being reborn as Ben, an accomplished businessman with an opulent office, a busy schedule, an extensive travel itinerary and a penchant for sharing what the company calls his “grains of wisdom” about rice and life. A crucial aspect of his biography remains the same, though: He has no last name. Plus, I only looked through a bit of the site that displays his office but in those few minutes something jumped out at me: I never actually saw Chairman Uncle Ben!!! I saw a portrait of him above his desk and all his important desk things, but no Ben. Just stupid, IMO. The whole thing. | ||
| Chrishayden AALBC .com Platinum Poster Username: Chrishayden Post Number: 4026 Registered: 03-2004 Rating: N/A |
Why don't they just dump Uncle Ben and replace him with a symbol more associated with rice like, ummm, say, - Uncle Confuscius, a smiling fawning Asian, declaring: "Me, likee rice. You likee, too, if you go out and by a box of Foo Man Choo (You are in rare form this morning I see. Let me ask you all a question: Would you patronize a Chinese restaurant that was owned and operated only by black people? We had one once--we got a lot of fast Chinese takeout around town--all in the Black areas, in fact, and some black people opened one. They had to close. I have to admit, when I walked in and saw that it was all brothers, I turned around and walked out myself. Black as I talk. Dammit! If you say you serve Chinese food you gotta have some Chinese touching that stuff! Now they have an Italian restaurant where most of the cooks are Black but they have a paisan up front--stuff is good, too! | ||
| Chrishayden AALBC .com Platinum Poster Username: Chrishayden Post Number: 4027 Registered: 03-2004 Rating: N/A |
Isn't it something--as despised as black people are white folks think when they sees us its good eatin'! If I hated somebody be damned if I'd eat what they served. So you got Black men and white women And white folks and black cookin' They defy death to get it. | ||
| Mzuri "Cyniquian" Level Poster Username: Mzuri Post Number: 4330 Registered: 01-2006 Rating: N/A |
I refuse to register on any news website just to read a story but from what I gather Uncle Ben has gone from being the rice cooker/butler to being the HNIC. Is that a gimmick to get Black people to eat more rice or what? | ||
| Yvettep Veteran Poster Username: Yvettep Post Number: 1842 Registered: 01-2005 Rating: N/A |
Uncle Ben, Board Chairman By STUART ELLIOTT A racially charged advertising character, who for decades has been relegated to a minor role in the marketing of the products that still carry his name, is taking center stage in a campaign that gives him a makeover — Madison Avenue style — by promoting him to chairman of the company. The character is Uncle Ben, the symbol for more than 60 years of the Uncle Ben’s line of rices and side dishes now sold by the food giant Mars. The challenges confronting Mars in reviving a character as racially fraught as Uncle Ben were evidenced in the reactions of experts to a redesigned Web site (unclebens.com), which went live this week. “This is an interesting idea, but for me it still has a very high cringe factor,” said Luke Visconti, partner at Diversity Inc. Media in Newark, which publishes a magazine and Web site devoted to diversity in the workplace. “There’s a lot of baggage associated with the image,” Mr. Visconti said, which the makeover “is glossing over.” Uncle Ben, who first appeared in ads in 1946, is being reborn as Ben, an accomplished businessman with an opulent office, a busy schedule, an extensive travel itinerary and a penchant for sharing what the company calls his “grains of wisdom” about rice and life. A crucial aspect of his biography remains the same, though: He has no last name. Vincent Howell, president for the food division of the Masterfoods USA unit of Mars, said that because consumers described Uncle Ben as having “a timeless element to him, we didn’t want to significantly change him.” “What’s powerful to me is to show an African-American icon in a position of prominence and authority,” Mr. Howell said. “As an African-American, he makes me feel so proud.” 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. “The only time blacks were put into ads was when they were athletic, subservient or entertainers,” said Marilyn Kern Foxworth, the author of “Aunt Jemima, Uncle Ben and Rastus: Blacks in Advertising Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow.” After the start of the civil rights movement, such characters became “lightning rods” in a period when consumers started to want “images our children could look up to and emulate,” Ms. Kern Foxworth said. As a result, most of those polarizing ad characters were banished when marketers — becoming more sensitive to the changing attitudes of consumers — realized they were no longer appropriate. A handful like Uncle Ben, Aunt Jemima and the Cream of Wheat chef were redesigned and kept on, but in the unusual status of silent spokescharacters, removed from ads and reduced to staring mutely from packages. Times, however, change, as evidenced by real-life figures as disparate as Wally Amos, the founder of Famous Amos cookies; Oprah Winfrey; and Senator Barack Obama, the Illinois Democrat who is running for president. In advertising, there are now black authority figures serving as spokesmen in multimillion-dollar campaigns, like Dennis Haysbert, for Allstate, and James Earl Jones, for Verizon. That helped executives at Masterfoods and its advertising agency, TBWA/Chiat/Day, consider the risky step of reviving the character. “There’s no doubt we realized we had a very powerful asset we were not using strongly enough,” Mr. Howell said. So about 18 months ago, the company and agency decided “to reach out to our consumers” and gauge attitudes toward Uncle Ben, Mr. Howell said. There were no negative responses or references to the stereotyped aspects of the character, he said. Rather, the consumers “focused on positive images, quality, warmth, timelessness,” he added, and “the legend of Uncle Ben.” That encouraged the idea that “we could bring him to life,” Mr. Howell said, sensitive to “the sorts of concerns that are important to me as an African-American.” ... The painting is also on display on the home page of the redesigned Web site, which offers a virtual tour of Ben’s office. Visitors can browse through his e-mail messages, examine his datebook and read his executive memorandums. “It’s important consumers begin to hear from Uncle Ben,” said Mr. Howell of Masterfoods, who is based in Los Angeles. Despite the character’s impressive new credentials, some advertising executives expressed skepticism that the campaign could avoid negative overtones. The ads are “asking us to make the leap from Uncle Ben being someone who looks like a butler to overnight being a chairman of the board,” Ms. Kern Foxworth said. “It does not work for me.” “I applaud them for the effort and trying to move forward,” she added, but the decision to keep the same portrait of Uncle Ben, bow tie and all, also dismayed her because “they’re trying so hard to hold onto something I’m trying so hard to get rid of.” Howard Buford, chief executive at Prime Access in New York, an agency specializing in multicultural campaigns, said he gave the campaign’s creators some credit. “It’s potentially a very creative way to handle the baggage of old racial stereotypes as advertising icons,” he said, but “it’s going to take a lot of work to get it right and make it ring true.” For instance, Mr. Buford said, noting all the “Ben” references in the ads, “Rarely do you have someone of that stature addressed by his first name” — and minus any signs of a surname. Mr. Buford, who is a real-life black leader of a company, likened the promotion of Uncle Ben to the abrupt plot twists on TV series like “Benson” and “Designing Women,” when black characters in subservient roles one season became professionals the next. “It’s nice that now, for the 21st century, they’re saying this icon can ‘own’ a company,” Mr. Buford said, “but they’re going to have to make him a whole person.” Mr. Visconti of Diversity Inc. Media struck a similar chord. He said he would have turned Ben’s office into “a learning experience,” furnishing it with, for example, books by Frederick Douglass and the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. “I’ve never been in the office of African-Americans of this era who didn’t have something in their office showing what it took to get them there,” Mr. Visconti said. The actual biography of Uncle Ben is at variance with his fanciful new identity. According to Ms. Kern Foxworth’s book and other reference materials, there was a Ben — no surname survives — who was a Houston rice farmer renowned for the quality of his crops. During World War II, Gordon L. Harwell, a Texas food broker, supplied to the armed forces a special kind of white rice, cooked to preserve the nutrients, under the brand name Converted Rice. In 1946, Mr. Harwell had dinner with a friend (or business partner) in Chicago (or Houston) and decided that a portrait of the maitre d’hotel of the restaurant, Frank Brown, could represent the brand, which was renamed Uncle Ben’s Converted Rice as it was being introduced to the consumer market. In coming months, visitors to the Uncle Ben’s Web site will be able to discover new elements of the character, Mr. Howell said, like full-body digital versions of Uncle Ben and voice mail messages. The Web site was designed by an agency, Tequila, that is a sibling of TBWA/Chiat/Day, and the budget for the campaign, print and online, is estimated at $20 million. TBWA/Chiat/Day is part of the TBWA Worldwide unit of the Omnicom Group... | ||
| Mzuri "Cyniquian" Level Poster Username: Mzuri Post Number: 4332 Registered: 01-2006 Rating: N/A |
Thank You!  | ||
| Cynique "Cyniquian" Level Poster Username: Cynique Post Number: 8142 Registered: 01-2004 Rating: N/A |
I also prefer to see places that specialize in ethnic cuisines be operated by folks representing said ethnicity, although it seems like nowadays anybody can make good pizza. | ||
| Yukio AALBC .com Platinum Poster Username: Yukio Post Number: 2202 Registered: 01-2004 Rating: |
If ol boy was promoted, why are they still callin him uncle!? | ||
| Mzuri "Cyniquian" Level Poster Username: Mzuri Post Number: 4333 Registered: 01-2006 Rating: N/A |
The only reason I visit any food manufacturer's website is to get cooking instructions and/or recipes. This giant corporation would have made a greater impact by donating the money they spent on this ad campaign to the New Orleans relief effort, or something more meaningful. But alas, I am only a grain of rice in an endless universe | ||
| Yvettep Veteran Poster Username: Yvettep Post Number: 1844 Registered: 01-2005 Rating: N/A |
Here is a URL for the book mentioned in the article: http://tinyurl.com/3crysd  | ||
| Yvettep Veteran Poster Username: Yvettep Post Number: 1848 Registered: 01-2005 Rating: N/A |
FUNNY! http://ourkindofparenting.blogspot.com/2007/03/how-ya-like-me-now.html | ||
| Mzuri "Cyniquian" Level Poster Username: Mzuri Post Number: 4338 Registered: 01-2006 Rating: N/A |
I was in the grocery store this morning and was looking at the Mr. Ben's packaging and it all looks the same to me. That bowtie outfit continues to present him as a butler. | ||
| Chrishayden AALBC .com Platinum Poster Username: Chrishayden Post Number: 4038 Registered: 03-2004 Rating: N/A |
When I was growing up we used to have "Sho is Fine" Maple Syrup with a couple of Samboes on the label licking up a big pot of Maple Syrup. I think that's what first attracted me to Mzuri--she awakened those memories-- | ||
| Yvettep Veteran Poster Username: Yvettep Post Number: 1849 Registered: 01-2005 Rating: N/A |
Chris, I thought you were pulling our leg, but no: http://www.cushcity.com/displaypages/adlabels.htm By the way, before I read this http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sambo's I never knew that the place was not (originally) named for Little Black Sambo. | ||
| Cynique "Cyniquian" Level Poster Username: Cynique Post Number: 8147 Registered: 01-2004 Rating: N/A |
I vividly remember the Gold Dust Twins cleaning products, and to their dismay, any black twins around in that era were automatically saddled with this Pickaninny label. | ||
| Mzuri "Cyniquian" Level Poster Username: Mzuri Post Number: 4344 Registered: 01-2006 Rating: N/A |
ChrisSambo - I awakened your memories of licking up a big pot of maple syrup??? I'll take that as a compliment  | ||
| Yvettep Veteran Poster Username: Yvettep Post Number: 1850 Registered: 01-2005 Rating: N/A |
Ah, young love... | ||
| Jackie Veteran Poster Username: Jackie Post Number: 549 Registered: 04-2005 Rating: N/A |
Yukio:"If ol boy was promoted, why are they still callin him uncle!?" We can call him Gangsta Ben...lol. | ||
| Yvettep Veteran Poster Username: Yvettep Post Number: 1860 Registered: 01-2005 Rating: N/A |
I finally finished a post about this topic: http://blog.lib.umn.edu/perry032/impossible/like_white_on_rice.html Chris, I mentioned your old favorite syrup. | ||
| Cynique "Cyniquian" Level Poster Username: Cynique Post Number: 8171 Registered: 01-2004 Rating: |
Boy, Yvette, your post was really an excellent dissertation on this subject! Quite interesting. | ||
| Yvettep Veteran Poster Username: Yvettep Post Number: 1863 Registered: 01-2005 Rating: N/A |
Thanks, Cynique! Tho don't say the "d-word"--I still have flashbacks! |
