Flipping the Aunt Jemima Script
Long before we knew them as "brand ambassadors", Michele Norris's grandmother, Ione Brown, toured mid-century America demonstrating Quaker's newfangled "ready-mix" pancakes.
Her eloquent description of her family's conflict and reflection on the potency of branding illuminates a sobering duality: what clever marketers might celebrate as memorable and evocative can also be haunting and menacingly cruel.
Here's to a new brand world.
