3M I, the local arm of diversified home, healthcare and auto products maker, will change a vector logo on its popular Scotch-Brite range of kitchens and residential cleaning products after a user of the brand pointed to a clear gender disparity on its logo – a picture of a lady with a bindi.
What does it desire to make a brand change?
For Unilever’s Fair and lovely, it took decades of pressure from sections who derived the brand for popularising ‘skin whitening’. The aggravation was George Floyd’s death within the US and therefore, the subsequent protests against racial injustice that prompted the company to knock off ‘Fair’ of its product and rebrand it as ‘Glow & Lovely’.
But, Scotch-Brite India took just each day. When communications expert Karthik Srinivasan acknowledged on LinkedIn about the brand having a woman’s vector and the way the gender marker might not fit the bill today. Atul Mathur, head of marketing, consumer business, 3M India (Scotch-Brite’s parent company) passed through his post within each day and revealed that the corporate was performing on doing away with the woman’s logo.
Maybe brands like 3M aren’t too hierarchical so It’s marketing head could respond in such a way. The pressure to be woke is high and types won’t take a chance. What does this response from Scotch-Brite India tell us about the days we live in? Are we seeing a change in brand communication to feedback? We asked a couple of industry experts about it.
Brands have transformed themselves over the years and while it won’t take them an extended time, now, the supply of various mediums has made it easier. As an example, Earlier, a brand would depend upon a publication to speak about it but now with social media, it’s quick and while i would not say it pushes brands but it does give them a small push towards transformation, Noted by Akanksha Patankar Mirji, Brand and corporate Storyteller.
Rajesh Lalwani, MD, Scenario Consulting, This trend about gender equality and social media influences isn’t new. Brands like 3M are driven by innovation, and it enables their marketing heads to reply quickly as compared to other places. Brands, at the end, are followers and not leaders. They do not create instead answer cultural phenomena, and therefore, the present market trend is one where you present yourself as woke. The timing is ideal, and therefore, the brand (Scotch-Brite) had an excellent and prompt response, but here’s the thing, somebody sort of 3M should have changed the vector on the package much earlier.
