As I was driving northbound on York Road (in Baltimore) I saw a billboard that completely confused me. In the background of the billboard were rows of smaller tiled pictures of the Uncle Ben face from the Uncle Ben Rice brand, and in the middle was a larger than life picture of just Uncle Ben's face--no ring around it, no red background (like the pic above) no orange background around the frame, no logo promise, just his face. It was...a little eerie.
Now I've seen this with magazines covers--the face of an entertainer staring back at you, like on Time Magazine or even Ebony, no caption, no teaser, the strength of the image stands on its own merit. Like Barack Obama and Joe Biden on the cover of Newsweek two weeks ago (yes, I know, and so was McCain and Palin...er, what?? You're breaking up...sorry, can't hear you anymore...) many brands will even feature just the brand design, logo or symbol itself on an ad, like Nike's Swoosh or a Susan Komen pink ribbon.
But seriously...uh, Uncle Ben? 90-second rice leading a revolution or somethin'?
Okay, now if this was a ploy on the part of the elusive Masterfoods/Mars Inc. to lure me to their website to check out Uncle Ben, then they definitely did that part well because that's exactly what I did.
This was an ad campaign that actually began last year and was called out by the NY Times. So if you haven't seen the makeover on the website yet, prepare to be entertained.
Umm...how can I put this to you lightly? Well, it appears Uncle Ben has been upgraded. Uncle Ben is no longer your friendly butler/domestic/waiter with the bow tie, he is now the chairman of the board. He wants you come in and sit down in his mahogany desk and his black leather swivel upholstered chair. He wants you to peruse the pages of his recipe book and feel all nostalgic like as you read about the history of the Uncle Ben brand.
But here's the funny part: the brand image is still the same. Same looking-to-glory smile on his face, same bow tie, same Uncle Ben. I was quite aghast to find out how much the ad agency, TBWA/Chia/Day spent on this campaign--a whopping $20 MILLION DOLLARS!!!
Could you imagine if Spike DDB had of landed this account?
Who is Mars Inc. fooling with this?
I feel like the damage with Uncle Ben brand image has already been done. It's too little, too late. Black folks from generations back already know the story of how the recipe was snatched from a black Texas farmer by a wealthy white food broker, who had dinner with a biz partner, saw the face of the matre d'hotel and said: "Eureka! We've got our Uncle Ben!" They probably couldn't use the farmer because he just didn't have that smiling, ready to please look. This smells like a re-branding disaster. And Check out the well-written post by anti-racism activist and blogger Carmen Van Kerckhove from last year.
