So last week Rachel Ray, erstwhile host of numerous cooking shows–including one that runs (coincidentally enough) in the back of New York City taxis–was involved in a bit of a kafuffle concerning the scarf she was sporting in the Dunkin’ Donuts ad above. For despite the appearance of said scarf in fashion magazines and the pages of Stuff White People Like, for conservative columnist Michele Malkin, it was as if the decidedly apolitical Ray had stepped out in a “Team Al Qaeda” sweatshirt.
Malkin’s outrage was picked up by her conservative minions and in no time, the offending ad with offending keffiyah was pulled.
Now my gut reaction is “this is what you fashionistas get for creating a trend out of something that has deeper meaning, like when you all started wearing Che Guevara t-shirts because you thought he was some sort of a cuddly old South American Abbie Hoffman and half of you didn’t even realize he was dead.”
But as marketers, that sort of attitude clearly does our clients no good, so let’s put on our practical old marketing hats and turn to the matter at hand: should Dunkin’ Donuts have pulled the ad?
I say “yes.”
Despite a certain percentage of BoBos (David Brooks’ wonderful term for the upper-middle class blue state ruling elite …. short for “Bohemian Bourgeoisie”) who drink Dunkin’ Donuts coffee as an anti-Starbucks “statement,” the bulk of Dunkin’ Donuts customers are blue collar workers who, while they may find Malkin shrill and dramatic, still think that she has a point: it is a scarf associated with terrorists (in their minds, anyway) and it’s not like either Ray or Dunkin’ Donuts was trying to make a political statement as much as a fashion one. The ideas of fairness, the actual non-Hamas-based origins of the keffiyah–these are areas a coffee and doughnut purveyor like Dunkin’ Donuts doesn’t need to get into.
So bottom line is there doesn’t seem to be much downside to either Ray or Dunkin’ Donuts for pulling the ad. The blame gets passed off onto some nameless fashion stylist, who likely won’t suffer any harm in his/her circles. And the mass of people wringing their hands about Dunkin Donuts giving in to conservative commentators and misinterpreting the spirit of the keffiyah and such are unlikely to constitute more than a small, non-influential blip of the Dunkin Donuts audience. And while say a Starbucks or Whole Foods might be able to get away with it, there’s nothing in Dunkin’ Donuts brand character that has them as an educator or a force for anything other than really good coffee and donuts.
Which is all they really need to concentrate on.
Tags: Alan Wolk, coffee, Dunkin Donuts, Keffiyah, Rachel Ray, Scarf, Tangerine Toad, Toad Stool
Are you sure about those DD customer demographics? I don’t know what they actually are, but I wouldn’t be too quick to make assumptions.
As for the keffiyeh, well, the “meaning” is that it’s very functional in desert climates, which is why you can see British soldiers, as well as every sane person in such a climate, wearing one. I think you’re right that pulling the ad was the right course for DD – they don’t need to educate the world on desert garb – but it is a depressing statement about the power of hysteria.
I’m of the “other” opinion… I personally did not get it, even now, I don’t get it. It’s a scarf, folks. Clearly, DD and Rachel Rae did NOT mean to make a political statement.
It’s getting scary, in a country that purports to support free speech, when everything anyone says…gets blown out of proportion (and that includes everything anyone wears in public).
Somehow, everything is becoming political. It’s “them” against “us.” And, who they are as opposed to who we are…is in the mind of the reviewer.
Scary.
I’m from Israel and I found the whole ruckus over the scarf hard to understand. First of all, from what I can see, Ray’s not wearing a kaffiyeh. Second of all, the people here who wear kaffiyehs tend to not be the terrorists. Younger Arabs don’t wear them; old Arab men often wear them, since that’s how they’ve always dressed, and they’re not terrorists. Even Israelis on hikes wear them to protect them from the sun.
The other day I saw a young (Jewish Israeli) woman who was an accompanying guard for a tour group in Jerusalem’s Old City, Kalachnikov and all, with a kaffiyeh wrapped around her neck. She was there to protect them from terrorists.
In short, the kaffiyeh is just a scarf for protecting oneself from the sun. I don’t think it’s a cause for hysteria. However, if coffee commercials start featuring people with ski masks holding M16s, then I’d start to worry.
What if a coffee purveyor in a Muslim or Middle Eastern country pulled an ad because the spokesperson was wearing a baseball cap, because it’s associated with “Team America”? Would we be shaking our heads about such silly prejudice?
Ann -
Delicate subject. It’s hard to compare a baseball cap there to a scarf here.
Demonstrating this requires a dose of reality that will, without question, differentiate one situation from the other.
Consider that women wearing general Americanized attire in public on certain streets in the Middle East would not just invite scorn and public, but public stoning. And putting it on broadcast TV would incite riots that would undoubtedly result in more than a few deaths. (Maybe not a baseball cap, but perhaps short shorts, bikinis, etc.).
This attire that offends them so much (and a general lax attitude towards sex in general) is one of the reasons those who dislike us claim they dislike us.
However, we should most certainly NOT lump them all together. Not all places in the Middle East are like this, and many in the general public are far more accepting than those who are incited by such things, and who will do violence to not only those who perpetuate the images, but also those who would try to defend them (which makes it less likely that they would be defended).
For my part, I think “Desert Chic” is stupid fashion for people not in a desert climate. But no one ever accused me of having a great fashion sense. As such, the picture doesn’t offend my fashion sensibilities.
It also doesn’t offend my sense of patriotism. It’s not the same as wearing a swastika.
Still any marketer must take into account how things may be perceived, even if it seems to many others to be unreasonable. So I agree with Toad’s POV, that DD was right to pull the ad.
Thanks for comments all.
And while I am on par with Cam in all things stylish, I do have to say that even if the scarf had zero meaning behind it… from a design angle, it’s a big honking scarf.
I mean you look at that picture (it’s actually a still from a TV frame) and you’re thinking “Oh look, there’s a giant scarf. And isn’t that Rachel Ray standing inside it?”
Just saying…
OMG, until I saw this Rachel Ray kerfluffle, I had no idea. Evidently, I’ve been employing dozens of dangerous terrorists who are landscaping my yard. And here I was thinking they were hispanic. But clearly, their kaffiyehs (which have at least as much resemblence to kaffiyehs as Rachel Ray’s) give them away.
One more clue that our marketing job is ever more challenging in the age of the ever-stronger reality distortion field. I think the more interesting message to take from this, is what is the value of the reality-distortion messaging machine to the marketer? When opportunity arises, it could at times be self-servingly effective to use it as either a weapon against the competition, or as a megaphone for our own messages. That is not the world I want to live in, but it seems an ethical dilemma for the marketer.
As a parting thought, purely hypothetically and irrespective of whether it happened or not, what if Starbucks planted the thought in Malkin’s head? Would that be right or wrong in your book?
Yes, the scarf really is too large and not very attractive.
However, two things.
1.) The scarf is a paisley black-and-white, not the traditional checkered pattern of an actual keffiyah.
2.) A friend of mine in Lebanon wonders, did Dunkin’ Donuts consider just how many patrons of their locations in the middle east (they have had a presence there for over a decade) actually wear keffiyahs.
My guess is someone on the set said, “OMG! Fabulous scarf!” and threw it on Ray. And that’s about it.
As for a baseball cap being entirely different… well, yeah, if you live in US.
Toad: “there’s nothing in Dunkin’ Donuts brand character that has them as an educator or a force for anything other than really good coffee and donuts.
Which is all they really need to concentrate on.”
I wonder whether there’s something in DD’s brand character about pandering to small-mindedness and intolerance.
Cam: “Still any marketer must take into account how things may be perceived, even if it seems to many others to be unreasonable.”
I also wonder whether DD as a marketer is taking into account how unreasonable its action is perceived as being… not only among vast numbers of customers in the US but also abroad.
Wow, this is one for the books. How stupid can we get? It is a scarf and Duncan Donuts caved over hysteria. It is a poor state of affairs. I have seen pics to TV where American soldiers are wearing those types of scarves.
Toad, do you really believe the so-called fashionistas have an agenda other then wearing something “cool? Most people who wore them had no idea who Che Guevara was. It’s 45 years later after all. I hope I don’t get in trouble for wearing my Hannibal hat! ?
Vahe -
With the “offending” image down, I doubt the people who think taking it down is unreasonable will remember or care 2 months from now. It’s an election season, and they’ll have plenty between now and then to find offensive.
Cam, true enough that many are likely to forget soon enough… but coming from where I come from, where memories can easily go back decades, centuries, even millennia… ; ) I won’t soon be drinking and coffee from DD’s, and I will most certainly tell my kids, who might well pass along the message to their friends–and quite possibly their own progeny…
Tongue firmly in cheek,
Vahe
@Vahe: As Cam noted, this will soon be forgotten, though if it had been left to fester… I’d agree with you if Ray herself was making a statement of some sort. But she wasn’t – sure she wasn’t thinking “Oh, a keffiyah” as much as “wow, what an enormous scarf.”
@harry – I think you misread my meaning – you are actually echoing my point that fashionistas have no idea who Che Guevara was – they just thought his picture on a t-shirt looked cool.
Ahh. Sorry Toad. I wondered about that. It did seem out of character for you.
Can I send you a T with Yves Saint Laurent picture on it to make up for my mistake?
To me the bottom line is this…If you look hard enough, you can find something offensive in ANYTHING.
As a native New Yorker and a recovering fashionista–$80 for a pair of Coach sneakers is just sick!–I recall these scarves being a huge look back in the early 90’s. You couldn’t walk down a street in the city without bumping into a table piled high with them.
We bought them in multiple colors to go with every outfit. We wore them on our heads, tied them at our waists, wore them on our shoulders.
Granted, since September 11th the world as we know it has changed. But let’s focus our energy on genuine threats instead of the ones we decide to conjure up in our heads.
Also, I happen to agree with Alan. The demographic of DD’s typical customer is just about the polar opposite of Starbucks. Just visit their stores and see who’s in and out. Look at where a great deal of their stores are located: near bus stops, gas stations, train terminals…
If nothing else, this whole gaffe has gotten alot of people talking about Dunkin Donuts.
As Tim Jackson, the flaming liberal, I think DD was amazingly stupid and I shudder at the whole thing. I fear for the direction the country is going with this kind of thinking. But I shudder at the direction the entire world is going. We seem to be less and less tolerant of anything/ anyone with a great polarization of thinking. Eek.
As Tim Jackson, the Marketing Genius/ Demi-God, I have to agree that DD did the right thing in minimizing the fight over something really actually meaningless. In the end they lose very little, if anything, and gain tons of exposure. Hell, this whole thing is getting way more exposure and column space than the ad ever would have on its own.
And I agree that the scarf is far too big. It makes her look even smaller than she really is. I ran a Guatemalan import company a billion years ago and we brought in scarves by the thousands. Many were very similar to keffiyahs. I never realized what I was fueling- I hope I’ll be forgiven.
I agree with you that they needed to pull the ad and the agency should have known better.
Sure, like all agency people they hang out with other agency people and don’t realize the Che was a bloodthirsty lunatic and the “scarf” is a terrorist symbol because that sort of clothing is just so hipster COOL. And IRONIC. Even POST-IRONIC.
But agency people are not regular even though they think that everyone is just like them.
Meh. I think it’s a scarf. I think the association to “terrorism” is made deliberately by overly-patriotic dramatists to give themselves something to moan about so that they can once again be the center of attention. Just because Yassir Arafat wears it does not make it a symbol necessarily.
If Rachel wore these scarfs all the time, no one would have noticed. But she doesn’t.
Besides, doesn’t the customer own the brand? If so, they have spoken. Move on.
It’s a message for creatives to heed – cigar is rarely just a cigar. You need to engage your filters at all times, check your work for what others may perceive as a “hidden message” and communicate very clearly or suffer wasted work. The scarf is clutter in the ad. That would have been the first reason to lose it.
Despite the popular mythology that surrounds him Che Guevera really was just a murderous thug. Wearing a T-shirt with his thousand mile stare is really making a statement, whether the wearer intends to do so or not.
However, on the scarf above, while I am not personally aware of the controversy surrounding it, pulling the ad because of absurd hysterics was not the right move from DD. We represent the U.S. to the world so let’s show them we are not idiots.
Let’s also give DD core customers some credit. They are not stupid. Are they really going to boycott over a wardrobe choice and a shrill response from radio hosts that is all “sound and furry signifying nothing?”
It looks to me from the ad above that DD is merely trying to expand their customer base beyond where it is now. Why undermine that over a scarf and make us all look like idiots to the world?
Every decision we make as individuals, corporations, politicians, governments, etc., affects our image as the great nation we really are. Let us work together to get that back as it is badly tarnished right now and we all could contribute to getting it back. We really *are* a great nation.