Insulting and Inclusive Branding

 Hello Everyone! This week I want to talk about the topic of insulting and inclusive branding. Over the week I have been reading about Banana Republic and it inspired me to talk about it on my blog.

Inclusive Branding is when a brand is inclusive in all aspects. May that be age, gender, sexuality, ethnicity, and more. The brand is welcoming and respectful to all their consumers. This helps the consumer feel safer and respected here, also making the consumer feel like they belong there. 

Insulting Branding is when a brand uses offensive language, imagery, and or symbols in any of their branding. Or even when they are marketing. Making the consumer feel unwelcomed in there store. This can also include things such as homophobia language, racist slurs, and more. 

While I was doing some research on brands from the past there is a brand I want to talk about. H and M was created in 1947 in Sweden. The brand carries the latest fashion trends at cheaper prices. In 2018 the brand released a youth sweatshirt that stated "Coolest Monkey In The Jungle" across the front of it. When consumers went to look at it on the H and M website, they were shocked to see a young black boy wearing it.  There is a stereotype that claims that black people are monkey's. H and M got a ton of backlash for how racist this was. Even celebrities that that were working for the company cut ties with them. As of now the image is no longer on there website. Looking into H and M's staff it seem that most of the staff is white, making it harder to see how this could be offensive to other people. 

A brand that is more inclusive is Cloak Brand. Cloak was created by both Markiplier and Jacksepticeye as as way to make a clothing brand that listens to the consumer feedback and help give the consumers what they are missing. Both Markiplier and Jacksepticeye have been very welcoming and loving to their audiences. Cloak has made it loud and clear that they support their consumers. On March 31st, on Trans Visibility Day, to help show their trans audience that they are loved and welcomed. Cloak also has models of different sizes, genders, sexualities', ethnicities, and more. They want the consumer to feel welcomed here. The sizes are also more inclusive, the sizes range from it looks like medium to 4xl. 

Overall I think is an eye opening thing. It can help other understand why you feel like a certain item of clothing is offensive to you. Or why a clothing item can be the best thing ever. As a shopper myself I would want to feel welcomed in a store, I would want to feel like I could say that something is wrong and that they would try to fix it. Instead of it just getting ignored. I would want to be able to be in a store and be able to find my size and find things I need, instead of just finding 2 different sizes or only finding a handful of items. I want my reader to be more educated on this topic because not everyone is the same the same race, gender, sexuality, etc. Even with just a small paragraph I hope it inspires my reader to branch out more and see things from other people's point of views.