Brands Don't Give A Rat's Hindquarters About Female Empowerment
But they certainly are trying really, really hard to make you to think that they do. (But, again, they don't.)
NOTE: Brands are not altruistic. This "Purpose” advertising trend is disingenuous bullshit. Brands read that young consumers want them to behave like “citizens”. Brand shareholders want them to behave like money-eating machines. So, many brands are trying to leverage a “purpose” or “cause” to appear “human”. But young consumers are not being fooled because they’re not fucking stupid. A brand’s ONLY purpose is profit. Period.)
March 8th was International Women’s Day, automatically setting off an International Women’s Month of dutiful platitudinal brand social media posts, most of which read like they were written by bots.
Last week, Frito-Lay announced that “Cracker Jill” snack packs will be sold at all MLB ballparks. Despite the slur name, some of the flexing Jills appear to be non-Caucasian.
So, why?
Said Tina Mahal, Vice President of Marketing for Frito-Lay North America:
“We are constantly inspired by the many women who are making history by breaking the mold, and we want to celebrate their achievements while supporting the progress. We’ve been so inspired by how girls and women are changing the face of the game, so in this spirit we introduce Cracker Jill to show girls that they’re represented even in our most iconic snacks.”
Frito-Lay is donating a whole $200,000 to The Women’s Sports Foundation. Two things to consider here: 1. What ballparks charge for snacks. 2. How much money Frito-Lay will make off of this transparent appropriation of female athleticism. But hey: They also Jill-ified “Take Me Out To The Ballgame”.
In a seemingly related move, Brown-Forman announced today that they would begin selling re-logoed bottles of “Jill” Daniel’s at all US liquor stores. Said Eric Doninger, Vice-President, Global Director of Brand Homeplace Operations:
“We believe that behind every great ‘Jack’ there is a great ‘Jill’. And we believe that next to every shitfaced passed-out Jack Daniel’s drinker should be an equally shitfaced passed out Jill Daniel’s drinker.”
And who could forget the Jane Walker introduction of 2018? She appeared on 250,000 bottles that year in the US, and owner Diageo donated a dollar for every Jane bottle sold to organizations that promote women. So, $250,000, at most.
Lastly, there was this master class in female empowerment branding by Shell in 2020. Launched on International Women’s Day, The $400 billion oil and gas giant changed the branding and signage at ALL of their 44,000 service stations worldwide to “She’ll”, short for SHE WILL. Kidding! They did it at one (1) station in San Dimas, CA. That surely helped immensely in making the future “gender balanced”. The negative blowback was so fierce that Shell stopped the campaign immediately after it started. One copy of the hollow accompanying video is still up, though.