Duncan Hines figures out recipe for racist cupcakes

The problem with doing a Top 10 list of the year prior to the end of year is you run the risk of something else happening before you run out of calendar. Take this year, for example. No sooner had I posted the 10 Dumbest Marketing Moves then good friend Jim Forbes sends this to me:

Dark chocolate faces, big white eyes and huge pink lips, all happily singing. What could possibly be wrong about this? Please watch the whole thing to the end as the final image seems like something out of Spike Lee’s Bamboozled. The name of the ad, BTW, is Hip Hop Cupcakes. Which is just … well … icing on the cake of all this idiocy.

It’s impossible for me to think that Duncan Hines did this intentionally. I cannot believe a major corporation would choose to damage themselves in the marketplace to no advantage. That does NOT excuse this: Action matters more than intent. The only reasonable explanation is that they are morons. Going out on a limb here but I’d bet actual money that most of the marketers at the corporation and the agency are Caucasian. This disaster was so easily foreseeable and avoided it’s pathetic it happened in the first place.Yet another reason why diversity in the workplace is a bottom-line issue.

Online anger has forced the company to do the right thing and pull the ads. Yowsa.

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Sprinkles cupcake store suing other stores over use of “sprinkles”

The Obscure Store unearthed this branding nightmare:

All told, lawyers for Sprinkles said, they have sent about a dozen similar letters to shops around the country and filed three lawsuits, including one last month against Famous Cupcakes in North Hollywood for using dots in its packaging and throughout the store.

Best quote from the story: “The question is whether Sprinkles can lay claim to a word that is commonly used in the context of frosting.”

The only thing I want to know about the context of frosting is do I get to lick the spoon?