Here’s the problem in a nutshell. If you’re a CEO of an iconic brand, do you modernize the branding of your product if it is associated with a country’s racist history? If so, how do you do this without either losing brand recognition or whitewashing the past?
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The original label |
To ensure Victorian consumers got the message that they were drinking the same treacly caffeine concentrate designed to fortify soldiers subduing the colonies, the kilted Gordon Highlander was shown being brought his drink by a Sikh manservant. [Link]
Of course, times change. The sun went down on the British empire, dusky Britons moved in and took over the cornershops. They weren’t quite as fond of this label as Victorian customers were.
So, in the 1980s, a compromise was reached:
In the 1980s, the label was moved to the back and later the Sikh bearer’s tray was removed but he remained standing. [Link]
This new label was a bit bizarre. It had the Sikh servant with his fist up, like he was about to punch the Scottish officer in his face.
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The newest label |
Of course, this didn’t last either. Brown people being uppity like they are, they wanted yet more:
Recently, several Asian shopkeepers threatened to stop putting the liquid coffee and chicory concentrate on their shelves unless the label was changed. After such threats and pressure from race equality groups, the manufacturers have had the scene radically redrawn to show the two men sitting side by side. [Link]
So the label was finally changed to the anachronistic image of the officer and his batman sitting down for coffee together. While this might be a useful image for today’s multicultral UK, it’s absurd to imagine that it might have happened back in the day.
Now of course, the other side is crying foul:
David Davidson, Conservative MSP (members of the Scottish parliament) for Northeast Scotland, said the change was “political correctness gone mad”. He added that there was “nothing pejorative” about the original label. [Link]
Actually, the image on the label is more suited to modern multicultural Britain than it might seem at first glance. To understand why, you have to look at the man on the right, the Scot. General Hector Macdonald was one of the Empire’s finest soldiers. He also may have been gay, and took his own life rather than be courtmartialed for it:
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The interim label - look at the Sardarji’s right hand |
.. while much has been written about the changing appearance of one Britain’s most enduring brands, there has been an uncomfortable silence about the British officer whose coffee break was immortalised on the bottle. The image, from 1885, of a Highland guardsman sitting outside his canvas tent far from home was based on perhaps the foremost military hero of his day - Major General Sir Hector Macdonald, scourge of Afghans, Boers and the Dervishes of Sudan.
He was the low-born soldier who turned down a Victoria Cross in favour of a commission, telling his superiors he would earn his medal later. He single-handedly saved the imperial Egyptian army from massacre.
… Macdonald, the son of a crofter, shot himself in the head in his bedroom in the Hotel Regina in Paris on 25 March 1903, minutes after reading a front-page story in the New York Herald suggesting he faced a “grave charge”. The accusation was one of homosexuality, an offence considered so serious under Victorian military law that those “convicted” were shot. In keeping with the mores of his era, Macdonald decided even the allegation was a death sentence. [Link]
A fighting queer scot in a skirt, sitting down to coffee with a Sikh man who had a fist pointed at him for two decades on a coffee called “Camp” … it seems like an apt image for the modern United Kingdom to me.
Articles by Turbanhead and Manish on the same subject
UPDATE:
Here’s the image that we ended up discussing in the comments: Figurine Pillar Candleholder - India from Target
