Joe Doakes from Como Park emails:
Should breakfast cereal art reflect reality – the brown guy is the janitor – or should it be fantasy, like every college publicity photo showing a perfect balance of beautiful people smiling for the camera on a beautiful sunny day?
What is Kellogg’s obligation: to teach children about the world that is, or to imagine a world that never was and never will be?
I suppose there’s a third possibility. It’s possible their obligation is to sell breakfast cereal to make money. If that were the case, marketing should use whatever imagery motivates customers to buy the product. Anything less would be a breach of their obligation to their shareholders.
In the olden days, a syndicated columnist often advised readers “Mind Your Own Business.” Still good advice.
Joe Doakes
I pretty much just make eggs.
This is why, any CEO that allows his brand to be a vehicle for virtue signaling should be removed, immediately.
Couple years ago, Kellogg’s served up a turd soup down here. I had to dig a little to find the story:
http://www.freep.com/story/money/business/michigan/2014/11/12/kellogg-gay-pride-ad/18920263/
Atlanta is turning into South Chicago, slowly but surely. Reprobate leftists are pretty safe doing what they will in Atlanta…as long as they are not hoping for support anywhere else in the South East. People down here dropped Kellogg’s bigly. It wasn’t that hard, really; Kellogg’s doesn’t make grits, and shrimp & Corn Flakes is wrong, but in a market that is shrinking, any miss step hurts.
2015:
“America’s leading cereal maker, Kellogg’s, reported a 4% decline in its annual U.S. cereal sales Thursday, slashing its long-term growth forecast roughly in half. What’s to blame for the soggy outlook? Kellogg’s and other cereal makers face two big problems: Breakfast-skippers and changing tastes.”
2016:
“Kellogg’s profit declined in the first quarter as the maker of Frosted Flakes and Pop Tarts continued to fight sluggish cereal sales.
The Battle Creek, Michigan company said sales slipped 1.2 percent for its flagship U.S. Morning Foods segment, which includes cereals such as Froot Loops, Mini Wheats and Raisin Bran.”
And now, by pulling those boxes, they admit they are racisss.
Couldn’t have come at a better time:
“Kellogg’s CEO John Bryant says the company’s plummeting stock and reported $53 million loss in the fourth quarter are unrelated to the company’s politically driven decision last year to pull ads from Breitbart News, which spurred a boycott campaign and intense online backlash.”
Make your flakes, simmer your soup, bottle your fizzy water…and stay the hell out of the virtue signaling business.