Slate coughs up a critical tactical error in the product naming arena in their Chatterbox gossip column, deriding the name of Dairy Queen’s latest product, the MooLatte:
A friend recently alerted Chatterbox that Dairy Queen is marketing a new frozen drink called the MooLatte. Isn’t that, he observed, er, kind of in poor taste? What he meant was that “MooLatte” sounds a lot like “mulatto,” which is a word, not in much use nowadays, that describes a person whose father is white and mother is black or (less common in bygone days) the other way around.
…Doesn’t Dairy Queen have any black employees? Or at least somebody who’s seen Show Boat? Why didn’t anyone point out the MooLatte-mulatto problem? It seems inconceivable that the resemblance would be deliberate, given corporate skittishness about generating controversy in the marketplace. In any event, a quick Web search shows that Chatterbox isn’t the first to notice, and to take offense (click here, here, here, and here). You say MooLatte, we say mulatto. Let’s call the whole thing off.
The tactical error is not Dairy Queen’s, it is Slate’s. Their literal, negative deconstruction of MooLatte has no basis in reality. It is just this kind of analysis that would knock a name like Starbucks off the table. Won’t people think Starbucks is a troupe of male strippers? Or a game show in which celebrities compete for cash?
Or what about a name like Crossfire, the sports car from Chrysler? Innocent women and children get killed in a crossfire, don’t they? Does that mean Crossfire is a bad name for a car? Of course not. But why not? Because the public accepts names in the spirit and context that companies provide. Consumers never engage in literal deconstruction — if they did there would be an endless line of protesters at the door of Banana Republic, because Banana Republic is a negative cultural slur aimed at Latin America. Except when it’s the name of a clothing store.
4 responses so far ↓
1 Sean // Jun 11, 2005 at 5:37 pm
Although people too often reach for connections that do not exist, it seems Snark’s commentary ignores the uncanny. Of course MooLatte is not just an entirely made-up word: (at least subconsciously) it is a direct play-on-words. Sometimes the most obvious reason is the correct one (says Ockham’s Razor, or Sherlock Holmes), and that is exactly the case here. Please do not defend the wishful ignorance of DairyQueen…
2 Max // Jun 17, 2005 at 7:59 pm
The defense of the naming of Dairy Queens Mmmmmoolatte smacks of the insensitivity that allowed that suggestion in the first place. To compare this gaff to the “crossfire” car is absolutely ridiculous. Crossfire does NOT refer to people….nor is it derived from the word MULE (which may be why the word fell out of favor in the first place)
3 Chris // Aug 10, 2005 at 11:53 am
Isn’t Milano similar to mulatto? Does anybody complain about the cookies which (God forbid!) have a ‘white’ cookie and (not white)chocolate??
It has one character sound different, just like MooLattE. Along similar lines, this sounds like the NCAA not allowing university mascots that are represented by native Americans in tournaments. It’s a group of middle-aged white businessmen trying to go after current, non-offensive material that they feel needs to be changed to fix the sins of their fore-fathers. We all need to quit worrying about the petty and begin to change our concerns toward problems that stare us all in the face, such as the millions of illegal aliens in America (who don’t pay taxes!)
4 chuck // May 6, 2007 at 8:15 pm
So DQ invented a word out of thin air, with no inspiration whatsoever, and it just happens to sound an awful lot like a racial slur? Or more likely, someone thought up the word, thought it sounded catchy and almost-familiar, and put it out there with no research done. Personally I can’t see how it could be a Milano take-off but rather a mulatto take-off. moo-la-toe, moo-la-tay. mih-la-no? I don’t think so.
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