Reckoning with Jemima: Can the Brand Be Remade for Good?

Details

Authored by professors Joseph Miller and Michael Stanko, Reckoning with Jemima: Can the Brand Be Remade for Good follows Quaker Oats’ decision to re-brand their popular Aunt Jemima brand and how the brand can be a force for good.

In this episode, Miller and Stamko discuss how this case fosters difficult but productive discussions regarding race, brands, and corporate social responsibility within business schools. During this conversation, we explore their tips on how to have conversations about race in a case class, unpack some of the “why” behind decades of inertia on Jemima and similar brands, and – most importantly – how we look forward.

Transcript

Hi, I'm met Quinn. Thanks for joining us for season two of decision point from Ivy Publishing at the Ivy Business School. Over the next few weeks we will bring an expert guest to help us explore the critical importance of covering equity, diversity and inclusion through the case method. This effort takes many forms, from confronting problematic brands to reflecting the real world in the cases we write and teach. This summer, quaker foods North America announced that the Antemima image and name would be retired. The move came after weeks of mounting public pressure, part of a wider reckoning with institutionalized racism across America following the police killing of George Floyd. Today we're joined by Joseph Miller, professor and chair of the marketing and Sales Department at Saint Ambrose University, and Michael Stanco, associate professor of innovation and marketing at North Carolina State Universities Pool College of Management. Alongside Pool MBA student Miriam D D Allo, the pair authored a free case to grapple with the history of this one hundred thirty year old brand, titled Reckoning with Jemima, Can the brand be remade for good? During this conversation, we explore their tips on how to have conversations about race and a case class, unpack some of the why behind decades of inertia on Jemi men's similar brands and, most importantly, how we look forward. Mike and Joe, thank you very much for joining us on the PODCAST. I want to dive right into the case and the real dilemma here. So quakers face criticism for the hundred thirty year old brand as early as the sty so this isn't something that's so new. Recent events, however, and broader change are really forcing the company's hand to change his products. In the case, how do you frame the decision point, because this is the thing we always come back to us. How did you frame these things? How did you come up with a decision point? I guess the the frame here is why would a company choose to keep around an Jemima when it has such a nebulous history? But at the same time they're not putting much into the promotion of the company. So what should they do moving forward? You know, an Jemima is the number one, you know, producer of pancake and pancakes. That's reason like syrup. If it's number one, you don't want to lose it. But at the same time, what does it take to have to get rid of that and to replace it with something else? What's involved in the decision criteria there? And so what are some of the throw if I'm a student, I'm going through the case in the class, what are some of the other turning points that I'm going to have to put myself through sitting in the chair of a decision maker? What can I expect from the case, because it's always need to see the different plot twist, if he will. Yeah, thanks man for for having us here. To me, there's there's a bunch of twists that students are going to dive in right and for many students in a marketing class there really used to the right answer is the most profitable answer. And here the ethical conundrums say hey, maybe we need to look at some some other possibilities. So an exciting thing for me was to see where students were falling and how the discussion was happening between students who I'll call profit optimizers and those that that were simply not going to be led down to decision where they viewed the ethics is murky. So I think that was an exciting part of the conversation. There's also some interesting themes about, you know, the corporate culture, the inertia and the questions of what about these other brands, these other assets that that quaker and or Pepsi could bring into the equation to to rescue this one if they if they chose to. And so, Mike, I want to dive a little deeper here into you know, there's the case part of it, but then there's how do we tackle, you know, leading a class, the larger historical and social context? You have any tips for those you know that have the case in hand and want to bring this to the classroom or and are just really curious, and maybe some are struggling with how do you tackle these contexts, these the social side of it, you know, like you said, outside of the marketing discussion? Yeah, and I know after I give my thoughts here, I'll be interested in Joe's because we come at this one from a bit of a different angle. For me, I like to be real clear with my students that I don't view myself as an as an expert in diversity as an expert in American history. You know, I certainly don't buy any means pretend that I understand the black experience in in America and and I think telling students that is helpful. Right. I start the conversation with, you know, a few minutes about my own journey and and trying to understand, you know, biases that I'm sure I've got going on and how I view diversity as important and, frankly, important enough to motivate some uncomfortable conversations. So we discuss, you know, the a respectfulness that is going to be important for the conversation that is going to follow and and for all case conversations, but that's heightened when you get into this particular case and then you know just the importance of diversity. We connect it the Pool College. That where I work, where I teach diversities, is a strategic objective. It's something that we were really focused on and I can connect to that and say, Hey, you know, the business the returns from diversity. The research shows that and because of that you need to be educated in some of these diversity conversations and the uncomfortable conversation were about to have is part of that and to me at least, that led to fewer questions of why are we doing this? I had a lot of students that were diving into it from different angles, each of them bringing their own experiences with diversity, and it made for an interesting, sometimes passionate conversation. So I really like that you shared with the students like here's your honest background on it, here is you're you're just saying you're not an expert on this, or you're setting the stage and you're, you know, being authentic as a leader. Joe, what do you think? What strikes as how do you handle the social context in your discussions in the classroom? Well, I'm you know, I'm not an expert on diversity either, but I tell you what, I have been walking around in black skin for all of my fifty years and you know, I'm never really articulated this before, but I'm going to tell you something. A lot you know, right before we started working on the Anjemima case, I had this really deep conversation with my own wife. You know, I'm black. I'm, you know, grew up in Detroit or in and around Detroit, for most of you know my upbringing. My wife is is white and she grew up in rural, rural Michigan, and she said that when we met when we were eighteen years old, she now realizes that she said a lot of things and acting in a lot of ways that would be like, really, really offensive to me, but she didn't really know she was doing it and she had no experience with having ever, you know, had been put in the opportunity to think about what things were like from the perspective of another. But she just really liked me and she wanted to you know, she wanted to be with me and and you know she was. She's told me at one point I'm really glad that you put up with me. Now, believe me, she was far from insufferable. She was she was really great. But no, I mean the fact that she said that it really kind of guided my insight into what our responsibilities are as educators when I teach cases like this. But really, to tell you the truth, for my entire professorial career, I really try to, you know, put students in the minds of other people and to what it's like to be them. And there's a lot of history that gets kind of like swept under and the history of you know, you know of things that lead to something, some of the decisions that we make in the corporate board rooms now that we don't really consider in the classroom because it's either something that we just don't have, you know, we find that we don't have time to do or we find that it's just too difficult to do it. So I see that's this an Jemima case and really, to tell you the truth, how I've kind of changed my teaching orientation to be one in which I, lest I say, listen, I I'm responsible in some small way for bringing the next generation of business leaders up. And you know, they have to be living in a world that contains this and it contains, you know, certain degrees of you know it will contain the issues of race, of sexual orientation, of gender identity. You know, what can I do to make it so that they make more informed decisions in the future and take all the factors into account? And that's my standpoint for and how how have the students reacted? Has You know, how have you handle the challenging conversations? You know, what has been the reaction or the major Aha moments? What have you seen you talked about with this case in particular, or we are, yeah, with with this case in particular. And then let's talk about the broader, broader approach as a responsibility for those that lead the class. Well, I'll tell you my experience and teaching the case has been actually kind of limited. I've taught one NBA class where I've used it, but that class was a was a synchronous online class and in this so what I did I had them right, you know, case right ups and then I had them, you know, a subset of the students create a video and the video, I mean they were very you know, there were very forthright in discussing some of the nuances of the case. I mean they didn't have any trouble discussing that, but it seemed as if they were a lot more candid in the written assignment. And so my takeaway from that is, even without them really realizing it, I think that they have an easier time when their faces aren't attributed to it then when they're just writing thing. That explains a lot like with regard to Internet behavior and stuff like that. But how we're very comfortable writing things when our faces aren't there, then where we have to go on camera and speak them my what about you? Yeah, well, first Joe. You're selling yourself a little bit short on that one. So Joe was good enough to join. I ended up leading for discussions of this case this semester and Joe joined us for the to online discussions. Oh Yeah, we did two discussions in person with, you know, physical distancing and whatnot into online and Joe is good enough to to hop on. We taught those together, which was a wonderful experience. In terms of what what surprised me from students what you know? I was definitely nervous going into these conversations. How is this going to go? They impressed me. They were respectful of the content. They understood that respecting this content means coming prepared with an opinion that you can back up based on this. There was a a diversity of what they wanted to do going forward. We certainly spent some time on the question of why did the change take so long here, and I think for some of those students that felt like a that felt like a justifiable condemnation of of quaker and and Pepsi. But that wasn't our focus. Our focus is on what to do going forward and that was where we had a range of options and a healthy, healthy dialog. I think at the end, at least, of one particular conversation I can I can recall, there was a real sense of just it's important for me to take away from this conversation that a company that does a lot of good things and a lot of smart things continued in this questionable ethical way for many, many years and, you know, a sense that, hey, we need to bring rigorous ethical decisionmaking to our lives because this is maybe part of what happens if we don't. And and you know, that speaks directly back to Joe, what you were saying too, of that. You know, we're creating the situations in the classroom, whether they be online or physically in the classroom, to prepare leaders to make decisions, to drive companies to change and then the communities to change. Joe, you mentioned you have the sense of responsibility for bringing up, you know, well informed, thoughtful leaders that are coming up. You know, you mentioned to change in approach. What have you noticed to come with students coming out of the classroom? Is it, you know, is is it impacting the way that they think in the way you thought it would? What have you noticed. You know. To tell you the truth, Matt, one of the big issues with me is that I understand that for a lot of students I can be a lot you know. I know I teach in in the state of Iowa and you know a lot of them come from, you know, small towns and so forth, and they experienced me. Might I see a part of my job as defined by the Jokeyo, the guy who hired me here. He said we want to make students comfortable being uncomfortable, and you know like so. So you know when I when I talk to them, I I get them to have dialog in Class A lot and I try to really challenge him in Class A lot because, frankly, a lot of them have ever had that before. Now, when dealing with race, I'll say, listen, there's not much you can say that's going to really insult me. But we have to have these discussions because I want to I want to see you be successful and to make good to decisions when you leave here and I need for you to trust me enough to allow me to talk to you about these things. And it takes a long time. I got to tell you. You know that that general approach to getting, you know, getting that degree of earnestness from students takes maybe two thirds of every term to really get there. But once, you know, I've been a point in semester right now, for instance, at the end of the term, where we're having such great conversations now because it took this long to really build to this point to be able to talk about stuff like this. And you know, I got to rethink about when I actually give them the Anthemima, as I gave it to my students early, but maybe later next time, Mike. What do you think? Yeah, I guess. Maybe I'll contrast that with I don't want to say it's a it's a story of me chickening out, but it's it's certainly a story where my sensitivity, my uncomfortableness here. Let me to pull back on some of the some of the content that I had planned on on using. So for those that that have gotten the teaching note for this case, there's a role playing exercise we have in there with with quaker and the NAACP, which is, you know it. I certainly can see it provoking some interesting conversations and it all of my online discussions. I use breakout rooms with different role playing activities and this was the one case I looked at it, I thought about it and I said I honestly, I won't. I don't want them having these conversations without me present in the breakout room. I'm just not sure where it's going to go. And so I pulled back. I just just cut that from our agenda and there was plenty of other things to talk about. But maybe I'll I'll contrast this with with that story of pulling back. So it's teaching this case is not a story of unbridled confidence and going in different directions. There's certainly a way to teach this case with a complete focus on branding and the choice going forward. And then there's the choice to teach this case where it's dives into a lot more history, dives into a lot more of the organizational inertia, the ethical decisionmaking and so on, and I you know, that's that's the great thing about case teaching is, you know, the instructure makes it his own or her own. Yeah, and so we've heard, you know, to make it a space where students feel comfortable being uncomfortable. Do you think we should be pushing authors and and faculty to be continue to push to feel uncomfortable in some of these discussions. What do you think, because that's come up in other discussions that I've had about, oh, should we include this or not? I'm not a hundred percent comfortable. How much should we be pushing him? We have to be able to, you know, encourage back. Well, I don't first of all, I think that in the general sense, I think that we tend to be kind of risk reverse and how we and how we decide to carry on conversations with students and I think that there's probably a long standing, you know, you know calculus of reasons why that is. But you know, I keep on thinking about, you know, starting this with the end in mind. What kind of students are we? Do we want to put out there? We've been having a lot of cut discussions at Saint Amber was about, you know, redefining our purpose, like what kind of people do we want to put out there after they graduate? And you know, for me, I'm always in all these meetings, I'm always thinking about well, I really want someone to be representing, you know, more holistic approaches to everything. You know, you know, considering all these factors that we don't really find that we have time to discuss and you know, I think that there's has to be some kind of change in who we are when we ask that of our students. It's absolutely necessary. So we have to kind of trend towards getting getting our you know, our professor oreate to be more well willing to take on stuff like this, like what do you think? Yeah, I mean. So I've talked to some of some of my colleagues, both both here and at other schools, and they've seen what are, what I'm doing, and some just say that's great and don't say much and some, some really want to dive into it and teach it. And then I've had a few honest folks say to me I'm not going to teach that. I don't want to end up on the front page of whatever my local newspaper is because a student got carried away or I say something stupid or or what have of you. So, I mean, there's called difficult conversations for a reason. I think in preparing the case, in writing the case, we certainly felt a responsibility to be as fair as we could to everyone while being real with history, so that that was a challenge as well. I mean there's a certain this is a certain element of personal teaching style and and how far you are willing to go from from your own subject matter expertise. I think it's probably fair to say that I stay stay closer to to what I know in marketing. Then then Joe, who is a little a little braver in this regard. So I want to dig a little bit at it. You know, what what was it about this company or this particular challenge? Like, why was it this case? What was it that spoke to you two to go okay, we're going to write this one of all the cases you could choose. What was it that hooked you in about this? Was it the company? Was it the newness of it? Because, again, this was turned around very quickly by you guys, and great job on that. But was there something that stood on the go? This is we gotta tackle this. Yeah, maybe I'll start with a story of a facebook post and Joe can take it from there. But so so I was. You know, we're not cool enough for for Instagram, or maybe Joe is and I'm just not. But was on facebook. I was on facebook one day and I saw Joe made a post about the onion article which had been I don't know, five days or a week previous, and just commenting how the onion article had in some ways predicted the the Pepsi and quaker oats announcements about the the coming changing of the brand. And I looked at this and you know, to me, as someone who's passionate about case teaching case writing, you look at the story of problematic brand that's announced a change but hasn't told you what that change is and instantly you know the genesis of a case study is born. And so I responded to Joe's post and I said, do you want to write a case study with me, and he responded via meme. The means said the MEME said, I'm not sure if you're being sarcastic, and then I clarify that I was. I was in fact being real. And a couple days later we really got got started with it and built a built a framework and you know, two weeks after that we had a it was a rough draft, but it was a it was a full one. You know, I guess maybe I'll take the chance. While I'm talking about the writing process. We really have to thank that the people who are writing about this not just years, but decades before we were write the historians talking about talking about these images and the history. There were editorials, you know, Fifteen, twenty years ago to get rid of this brand and we could build off all of that material. So when you're writing a secondary case, or some people call it a library case, you're only as good as the material you can find and we were thankful to build on years and years and years of writing that came before us. It was totally unbeknownst to us at the time. I mean, you know, one of the things that Mike and I often, you know, to say casually is, you know, we used to use aunt jemime and didn't think anything of it. I mean it was I used it all the time growing up. I really didn't know there was a problem with aunt jemime until too long before we actually started writing the case. I mean I kind of knew there may have been a nebulous history, but I didn't I wasn't able to exactly triangulate what the what the source of that was. But I'll tell you this. One thing about Professor Stenko that I really love is that he really under sells how much of a taskmaster he is on this stuff. I mean he really just, you know, as soon as I said as some of as soon as I set them the mean not sure if serious. I mean he was at work. I mean he was like ready to work on this stuff and he has me with all this stuff and I'm like okay, well, well, let's go. He's like we're doing this and I said yeah, and all of a sudden he's give me all this work is. We worked on that thing really hard for like two weeks, just trying to mix you know, a deadline of something conference, but to try it out. But I mean we really worked hard because we understood that in order to get, you know, this into classrooms by the time time semester started, we had to put it out there really quickly. Yeah, with with the when we knew that a lot of American schools we're going to start the false semester early because of covid and we had the realization about the same time that this could be really powerful in driving important conversations for future leaders. And all of a sudden the other things, at least for me, maybe this is why I became such a task master, was all the other things I was working on just just kind of seemed like they paled in comparison to to the importance of this work. And so for for those couple of weeks as we as we put that rough draft together, I'll be honest, I don't I don't pull the night shift after I put my kids to bed too often, but we were, we were pulling those for for a few weeks there and I had some some interesting history books on my on my reading shelf, and it was it was certainly a labor of love. I mean for a lot of people, and I think Joe said it earlier this summer, the spring, with everything going on, a lot of people were thinking, you know, what can I do? And I guess at the at the point where I realized there could be important conversations that come as a result of this, and that probably led me to pour in myself into this pretty pretty heartily. You know, and we of course, we can always do more. We always need to do more, but certainly this is a start. And what was the drive? The cases free. It's been released for free. Of you've released it and kind of some multiple different places. What was behind that decision? Was this back to it's our responsibility to grow the next generation of leaders. How did that conversation go? We don't want there to be any constraints that are placed at all in that that we're a professor would not want to, you know, have this conversation because we think it's really important and if cost is an issue with that, we don't. We would we would prefer to have that, that that issue be removed. We really want this discussion to happen and it doesn't necessarily have to be at Jemima, but I mean, I think that that's a great a great spring boiling into some really good conversations about what some of the big issues are going to be going forward from here on out. Now I'm having go ahead, Mike Guess. Sorry. Thank you, Matt. I guess this is a good chance to thank ivy for, you know, helping to helping to push this case out there for free to to all student it's because that's a that's a big move for IV in the the platform. Giving giving a push to it is is, you know, is big in terms of getting this to more students. When we hear from from students, from instructors and you know, it's great to have a case you wrote used in a top business school that's awesome, but the idea that there are some high school students using this, their community college students using this and that free price tag is really meaningful to a high school classroom. So to me that was really rewarding and you know, I will say the last thing we wanted to do is look like we were trying to profit from, from from this story. So we think there can be some important conversations here and hopefully that price helps and it is. It is important and it's that we're very happy to do this and again help have further discussion in any ways that that we can, because our cases in the library really have to reflect the communities and the view points and the different challenges around the globe, because that's where our students are. So that's thank you for bringing it to us. My last question for both of you is, having gone through this process of coming up with the idea to Emoji, to writing it in two weeks and getting it out there, has has it changed or do you think this will change the approach for the next next case that you write? Has has this process in tackling this subject changed anything in you as authors? I can tell you that this is my first major case, I mean Mike's. That go as a pretty good history of doing cases, but it will not be my last. I mean the the process of case writing I found this summer really appeal to me and I really you know, I'm thinking all the time now about like things that I could do in terms of a case analysis that I never really thought of much before. I you know, to be able to retell the story of some some business product, business problems and to be able to frame it for students in a way that's amenable for discussion. I think really appeals to me. Mike. What do you think? Yeah, thanks, Sho the the big thing I learned looking back at the process right and to be fair, two weeks to a first draft and there was some some iteration after that. That was was important. But slowing down is is really important to getting the story right so that there's there's a balance we're trying to strike between this is this is urgent material and we want to have these discussions soon, but we've got to be fair to everyone involved. We've got US slow down, we've got a triple check things. So that was a big learning for me was, you know, you got to go as as slow as you need to go to get the to get this story, the story right, testing with students. I coach a case team and we tested it fairly early with with that team, with that team of four or five students, and you learn a lot because you're you're starting to see the story through their eyes, which was powerful and shaping how we wanted to change it from there. You know it. If I had even more time I would love to to put it in another instructor's hands and see see how they ran the class with it and what I could take from that. But again you're balancing, you know, urgency, your own time demands. It's it's you know, I said this to my own students. You know, I figure I've probably got twenty years left in my teaching career and you know, when it comes time for that last semester I'm picking out the case studies I'm going to go with for that last semester. I think this one's probably probably going to come out and I told Joe I felt pretty uncomfortable. But just so I would have the props for that case, I went to Amazon and I bought myself a bottle of Syrup in a box of pancake mix and I felt awful doing so, but I've got them in a sealed bag now. So for in twenty years, given that my Undergrad students in twenty years or just being born now now, I'm sure they're going to look at this case and say this can't even be real, how could this have even happened? And we're going to say this is what I grew up with, eating pancakes, you know, and I think. I think this is one of the cases that I'll be happy to go out on a teaching career with. Well, Mike Joe, this has been fantastic learning about this process. What I would encourage the listeners to do is check out the case, use the case and then get in touch with us. Let us know how to this go. Let us know what did you see, how did your students react, because that's you know, we can keep adding experiences to this and that's what this is really about, to bring it to as many classrooms as possible. So thank you again for your work in and putting the case together and again taking such pride in the responsibility of growing the next generation of leaders. Thank you very much, gentlemen. Thank you for having us. Thank you, Matt if you enjoyed today's episode, subscribe to Decision Point on spotify or wherever you listen. Be sure to check out the show notes for links to cases, resources and more. have any feedback, send us an email at cases at IV DOT CAA