It was last year I talked about Pride Month being shamelessly exploited by big companies. Well it seems as if they were going to try again with another celebration this year but, hopefully, it's backfired. If you've been looking at the right media, you would of course know that I'm talking about Juneteenth; the observance and celebration of emancipation for enslaved African Americans. Recently, Wal-Mart received backlash for attempting to market a Juneteenth ice cream, nearly a year after the government made it a national holiday.
Now I know marketing certain holidays isn't new for stores like Wal-Mart, however this does go a bit farther than just using the name. It turns out, holiday names can be trademarked. Credits to Corsearch for the article.
So, if a holiday could be trademarked, and Wal-Mart goes ahead and trademarks Juneteenth, what does this mean? Well, while they can't prevent people from saying 'Happy Juneteenth', this can certainly put a limit on who can use it for marketing. So, if an actual Black-owned business does intend to celebrate Juneteenth in marketing, they might run into issues.
Again, this is kind of a similar situation to Pride Month. Companies planning on outright piggybacking off an event with more significance than they admit, then trying to market it to the moon and back. However, something different happened this time, that should hopefully have a positive effect going forward. You see, social media has become an interesting tool in modern times. While back then, resentment was a bit slow to be known, nowadays, we have the information at out fingertips. So, people were thankfully able to vocalize their outrage, and Wal-Mart decided to back out.
And that pretty much does it for the story. I just wanted to retell it in my words, and kind of share some of my thoughts since it did remind me of the blog I did last year. Hopefully, after this incident, this gets corporations thinking about how they shouldn't keep doing this. Not to say all companies are going to try and exploit the Juneteenth holiday for quick cas; if you know of any that are honestly meaning to celebrate Juneteenth, Pride Month, or any other similar celebration, please support them, I'm sure they'll love it. I just hope that they'll be free of bigger companies making it hard for them. I'm also hoping bigger companies listen more to the minorities they claim to celebrate.
With that being said, thank you for reading, and stay tuned!
