Aunt Jemima: Parting is such sweet satisfaction
So what happens to a household name without its name?
As a professional namer, I think about names all day. The great thing about naming a new company or product is that you’re starting from scratch. You can decide what you want the narrative to be from day one. Renaming is trickier.
Our Creative Director, Eli Altman wrote a piece about the challenges of renaming and why it becomes necessary for so many brands. One of the biggest renaming challenges is the question of brand equity. How do you preserve everything that was built around that original name over the course of many years — or even generations? How do you create a new identity without losing your status as a household name?
In other words: Will Aunt Jemima still be a household favorite when the brand is no longer based on a household servant?
Ultimately, the experience of a product — the taste, the value, the shelf space — is what helps build brand equity, while the name, logo, and other brand elements are vessels for that equity. Often, they become practically inseparable over time. What would the Nike brand be without the swoosh? What’s Tropicana without the orange on the bottle? What would a McNugget be without the “Mc”?
Aunt Jemima has over a century’s worth of brand equity. For those asking “Why change the name after all this time?”, a better question might be “Why was that name chosen to begin with?”. Apparently inspired by a minstrel character in the late 1800s, Aunt Jemima represented the “mammy” archetype. When the product was introduced in 1889, slavery had legally ended but the imagery associated with it (as well as many of the household roles it had established) remained. Building brands around slavery-inspired roles might’ve even reflected a certain nostalgia for the institution.
The “Aunt” moniker was also a holdover from that era, when white Southerners would often refer to older slaves as “aunt” or “uncle” rather than “Mrs.” or “Mr.” Aunt Jemima exemplified this subtle weaponization of everyday language — using language that, unlike a blatant racial slur, was innocuous in other contexts and gave the illusion of respect. Names like these can still feel somewhat innocuous today because plenty of brands use the same language to refer to real people or family members (i.e. Auntie Anne’s, Aunt Jackie’s, Uncle Funky’s Daughter, Uncle Nearest Whiskey, etc). There’s a warmth and familiarity that comes with these names, which is probably why the name Aunt Jemima sat well with contemporary audiences for so long.
Over the years, the brand has tried to distance itself from its history by modernizing the image of Aunt Jemima. As a kid, like many, I saw a 90’s-era Aunt Jemima and mistook a racist trope for well-intentioned representation (“Hey, that does look like my aunt.”). I had little contact with the brand after that until I experienced derogatory usage of the term a few years ago, in what seemed like a Freudian slip. A white acquaintance referred to me as “Aunt Jemima” while I served him a plate of lasagna I’d made. I was staying as a guest in his home — an old farm property.
Fast forward to present day, where Quaker Oats (Aunt Jemima’s parent company) has announced that it will remove harmful brand names and images. So where to go from here?
What if they change the name and logo, and nothing else?
They’ve already committed to changing both the name and the logo, because in this case, they are one in the same. Quaker is under too much scrutiny to do this halfway. So without those two, what other brand elements are unmistakably Aunt Jemima? A bright red background, yellow details, an iconic font, and usually, a handled bottle. If all of these elements remained, with a new name and logo, it’d be hard not to know it was related to the original. Which begs the question…
Should the new brand resemble the old brand?
Probably not, and that’s because it doesn’t have to. Aunt Jemima is one of dozens of Quaker Oats products. If it was reintroduced as an entirely new brand, but with the same taste people had come to expect, it’s hard to imagine it wouldn’t see the same success. If anyone knows how to dominate shelf space and appeal to hungry shoppers, it’s Quaker Oats.
What about brand equity?
Equity isn’t equity if it’s negative. In fact the “loss” of Aunt Jemima’s brand equity would ultimately be a gain for Quaker Oats. They’d end up on the right side of history, creating a better position for themselves and all of their future products. Plus, this is an opportunity to get creative. There’s no shortage of brand names, logos, or characters that would put smiles on the faces of tomorrow’s breakfast lovers.
We are talking about breakfast food, after all. By contrast, a sports team’s brand equity is embedded into the identity of so many of its fans who live and breathe that team — amplifying its name and logo on T-shirts, bumper stickers, even tattoos. It’s why rebranding the Washington Redskins could be a long, fraught, yet much-needed transition. Fortunately (or maybe unfortunately) for Quaker Oats, people aren’t quite as invested in pancakes.
At our agency, we often say to our clients: a good name will set you up to tell the story you want to tell. It’s clear that some stories don’t hold up forever. Renaming can be as simple as finding a new narrative that better reflects where a brand is headed. If anything, there’s an opportunity to claim a stake in the future rather than being a vestige of the past.
Thanks to Eli Altman.
