A necessary change
Amid the Black Lives Matter protests, Conguitos chocolate brand (literally translated as “little Congoleses”) received fierce backlash on social media. We decided to learn more about it and discovered that racism is also deeply rooted in the world of advertising. And we decided to do something about it. This way, we redesigned the naming and packaging of three Spanish food brands that depicted a racist visual identity. We want to prove that it is possible to redesign this very well know brands, getting rid of its racist graphics, while still keeping them recognizable for the consumer.
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CASE 01
CONGUITOS:
NUTS COVERED IN CHOCOLATE
images rooted in colonialism and racist stereotypes, with a mascot which is literally a horrid caricature of black people, depicting them as wild, uncivilised and primitive people.
A brand new mascot and naming
For Conguitos, we decided to come up with a neutral name that speaks about the product itself. We came up with Chocohués, what in English could translated as Choconuts. A playful and catchy name easy to remember. Obviously the mascot had to be completely redesigned, bringing to live one of their chocolate covered peanuts. The new mascot is a friendly icon, free of racist stereotypes.
CASE 02
COLACAO:
CACAO MIX DRINK
images rooted in colonialism and racist stereotypes, once again. The lyrics of their original advertisement sing along the lines of "I'm that lil' black guy from tropical Africa that sings the ColaCao song while working".
An up-to-date packaging illustration
For ColaCao, even though the company already redesigned its brand image a few years ago, we believe that a more significant change was necessary. Thus, after reading the statements of Iris Sastre Rivero, responsible for the change.org campaign that asks Lacasa to change its image («The best would be to see them consume the chocolate drink» – El País) we decided to illustrate her words literally. In addition to eliminating the harvest scene, the image focuses on product enjoyment by black people.
CASE 03
NEGRITA:
RUM BRAND
Virtually not a single black person can be seen on their commercials, while still using a black woman as their logo. Fun fact: in this, their latest video, they added a black woman as a response to the viral anti-racist movement happening on the streets and social media but previous promotional videos had no black people at all -and neither does this one.
Empowerment and joy for the new logo
Negrita (literally translated as "little black girl") is the last brand we decided to redesign. We completely made over the logo, empowering the women depicted and again enjoying the product rather than producing it. Her formal and even complacent expression has been purposely replaced by an empowered, joyous posture and gesture. After posting the redesigned alternative on social media, we received a few comments on her appearance. Some women told us that her appearance was a bit sexualized, exaggerating the feminine attributes of a woman in a disproportionate way. So after listening to these people, we have retouched the illustration to avoid sexist stereotypes.
THE RESPONSE:
ON SOCIAL MEDIA
We never imagined we would get such a huge response from this project. It reached over 400.000 people on Instagram and Twitter and was shared by multiple activists and collectives for racial justice, which makes us extremely proud. You can follow @sharpandsour on instagram to see what happened.
We also found very ironic that the people who complained the most about the redesign where white men. Its surprising how racism can be invisible for a big part of the population, with changes for better regarded as unnecessary and excessive. On the other hand, we were so happy to see that actually the black people (for who we made the re-design on the first place) really appreciated the new design.
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We also decided to write an article about it. Here it is:
El racismo en nuestra conciencia colectiva (in Spanish)
We hope you liked this project.
Thank you!
