BATTLE CREEK, MI — Kellogg’s is the latest company whose marketing campaigns are causing people to scratch their heads and wonder who is vetting promotions and packaging before their rollout. The Battle Creek, Michigan-based cereal and snack maker said it would redesign its Corn Pops cereal box after complaints on social media that the packaging promotes racism.
The cartoon Corn Pops depicted on the back of the box are yellow, with one exception — the only brown Corn Pop is depicted as a janitor sweeping the floor. Novelist Saladin Ahmed, the writer of Marvel Comics’ Black Bolt series and author of the 2012 fantasy novel “Throne of the Crescent Moon,” called Kellogg’s out on Twitter, asking “why is literally the only brown Corn Pop on the whole cereal box a janitor” and saying that it is “teaching kids racism.”
In a follow-up tweet, he said: “Yes, it’s a tiny thing, but when you see your kid staring over this breakfast and realize millions of other kids are doing the same …”
Kellogg’s apologized on Twitter and said that it is committed to diversity and inclusion and “did not intend to offend.” The artwork is being updated and will be in stores “soon,” the company said.
Earlier this month, Dove, the personal-care products line owned by Unilever, apologized for a video clip posted on its Facebook page that showed a brown woman removing a sweater only to transform into a white woman. The company said the intent was to show that its body wash is for every woman and “be a celebration of diversity,” but admitted it “got it wrong.”
Dove had come under fire earlier in the year over body wash bottles in different shapes that were intended to celebrate different types of beauty, but bombed after critics said it defined women by their body shape.
And the skincare company Nivea also took heat for marketing a skin-lightening product in Africa that featured a black woman who looked with disdain at her skin and then said, “I need a product that I can really trust to restore my skin’s natural fairness.” After she applied the product, a narrator said Natural Fairness Body Lotion can “visibly lighten skin.”
In April, Pepsi pulled an ad featuring “Keeping Up With the Kardashians” reality TV star Kendall Jenner that appeared to trivialize the Black Lives Matter protests over police killings of black people. In a statement, Pepsi said the intent of the ad was to “project a global message of unity, peace and understanding,” but admitted: “Clearly, we missed the mark and apologize.”