Obama-Fingers is a product being offered by German food manufacturer Sprehe. Adpulp recently commented on this story stating, “The idea, [a Sprehe representative] claimed, was to get in on the Obama-mania which is continuing to grip Germany.”
Sprehe isn’t the only company that decided to ride Obama’s recent success. In January, mlive.com published an article about a local gelato manufacturer that created a new product dubbed, “Barack-y Road.”
Getting back to Sprehe for a moment, there are two fundamentally unsound pieces to this campaign.
First, the company did not do their due diligence in conducting market research to search for potential pitfalls of attaching an African American’s name to a fried-chicken product. Now, I understand this product is being released in Germany. But, it was unacceptable for Sprehe to state that they had no idea of the racial overtones. I would much rather prefer the company say that they were aware of the racial overtones but decided the stereotype wasn’t prevalent in their geographic market locations.
Secondly, attaching your brand to a prominent global figure like President Obama isn’t a great marketing move. If he ends up doing something incredibly bad to lose German approval, customers may cease purchasing Sprehe products because of the association with President Obama. This is especially true for the gelato manufacturer in Michigan. U.S. consumers are much more likely to abstain from buying products associated with political parties.
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