News
October 21, 2020

Geoff Edwards in Harvard Business Review: “When Your Brand Is Racist”

The status quo in advertising and marketing has been upended in the wake of racial unrest in 2020, forcing brands to reevaluate every aspect of their products, from names to imagery to taglines and more.

Geoff Edwards

Managing Director, Creative

Quaker Oats retired the more than 130-year-old Aunt Jemima brand and logo, while Uncle Ben’s rice became Ben’s Original and Cream of Wheat removed its Black chef imagery from its packaging.

In the latest Harvard Business Review, Executive Creative Director Geoff Edwards was asked to lend insights on a fictional case study: “When Your Brand Is Racist,” in which a senior brand manager is faced with renaming a whiskey brand with racist origins, folding it under an existing product line, leaving it as is, or killing it altogether.

Check out the November/December issue of HBR to read Geoff’s point of view on what the brand manager should recommend to the board of directors – and how brands should be thinking about this in the real world.