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Market research has repeatedly shown a diverse and inclusive corporate culture is just good business. It increases employee satisfaction, retention and performance.
It allows for newer ideas, thus helping businesses avoid stagnation. It's good for sales!
As such, corporations have been leaning in to the idea of inclusion where they once resisted. The thing about leaning, though, is that sometimes you fall.
Mars Inc. may have just proverbially faceplanted.
The company announced it will be making changes to the M&M characters in order to be more "inclusive." Public response has been ... tepid, shall we say?
The top comment on this YouTube video ad at the time of this writing is:
"You guys are lucky YouTube got rid of the down-vote counter."
It's a sentiment echoed repeatedly in the comment section.
While the dislike counter may not be active anymore, the video has over 115k views and still isn't close to getting a thousand likes.
That ratio speaks pretty loudly.
It's not the idea of inclusivity itself that people have an issue with. It's the way it was handled.
The "inclusive" changes Mars Inc. made to the M&M characters included changing the green M&M's shoes to sneakers, lowering the heels on the brown M&M, making the red M&M a little nicer and allowing the orange M&M to “acknowledge his anxiety.”
The green and brown M&Ms will stop being catty towards each other and team up for girl power. The candies arms and legs will be a light shade of whatever their candy coating is.
They were all a peachy-beige color before.
Finally, Mars announced the M&Ms will no longer have prefixes—something that was pretty much never used anyway.
The public seems unconvinced when it comes to this sort of "inclusivity."
"It doesn't matter if you're black, white, trans or nonbinary\u2013\u2013we at M&M's would love to get rich by giving you type 2 diabetes." \n\nYou gotta love Corporate Woke. lmaopic.twitter.com/lQYnjNn9j9— Coleman Hughes (@Coleman Hughes) 1642715289
reminder to those engaging w the m&ms shoe change thing:\n\nit\u2019s a marketing ploy and is probably one to distract from allegations of child labour— Tesneem\ud83c\uddf5\ud83c\uddf8Free\u270c\ufe0fPalestine\ud83e\udde1\ud83e\udd0d\ud83d\udc96 (@Tesneem\ud83c\uddf5\ud83c\uddf8Free\u270c\ufe0fPalestine\ud83e\udde1\ud83e\udd0d\ud83d\udc96) 1642777153
I want to thank M&MS for toning down the sex appeal of the mascots. I\u2019ve been dealing with an M&M porn addiction for some time. The commercials were always triggering.— Jared Freid (@Jared Freid) 1642873814
I have literally never eaten an M&M because always I found their characters outdated and offensive. Can\u2019t wait to finally try onehttps://twitter.com/thehill/status/1484178175059894275\u00a0\u2026— Tommy Smokes (@Tommy Smokes) 1642701120
Women: Everyone's lives would improve if we had things like paid family leave, universal pre-K, affordable child care, and the ability to make informed decisions about our reproductive futures\n\nCapitalism: Lol no but please enjoy these feminist M&Mspic.twitter.com/Xoy7mYAK3Z— andi zeisler (@andi zeisler) 1642703204
100% here for a sneakerhead m&m we are an oppressed community that deserves representationpic.twitter.com/CG4VHcZLla— drip posting (@drip posting) 1642692745
I don't understand how people think "woke M&Ms" is some left-wing thing. No one asked for this. The left asked for free healthcare and defunding the cops and for people to actually, materially be taken care of.— Read The Dispossessed by Ursula K. LeGuin (@Read The Dispossessed by Ursula K. LeGuin) 1642712778
It feels so good to order ten pounds of m&ms off of Amazon when you know the company that makes them really cares about representationpic.twitter.com/LsX5PrJoHs— Spurt Magoo (@Spurt Magoo) 1642745051
Nobody. Literally nobody ever thought this. \nThis is the result of massively out of touch executives trying to connect to a consumer populace who is so different than themselves, we may as well be a different species.— CandyGardens (@CandyGardens) 1642734785
You ever be eating m&ms and think \u201cthese would taste better if they had mental illness\u201dpic.twitter.com/OcamczzMQY— \ud83d\udd25derek\ud83d\udc80 (@\ud83d\udd25derek\ud83d\udc80) 1642702660
The character changes themselves weren't a hit either.
Mars announced a lot of changes, but most of them were to the backstory and personalities of the characters. Very few of them impacted the design aside from changing the shoes on the green and brown candies.
The "inclusive" changes are almost non-existent from a design standpoint.
The art changed so minimally it likely could have been done without many people noticing—and certainly without an announcement that many say felt like pandering.
Twitter had some thoughts.
Omg they. made a Bottom M&Mpic.twitter.com/l4rkTZKm3I— poe (@poe) 1642990094
The New M&Ms design news is a gimmick to get people to look at it. They barely changed. It's mainly just the shoes. Either way, it's for outrage hate clicks but I'm not sure how many you can get on that regarding Candy designs.— MachGao (@MachGao) 1642734291
re-yassify the M&Ms immediatelyhttps://twitter.com/thehill/status/1484178175059894275\u00a0\u2026— Magdalene J. Taylor (@Magdalene J. Taylor) 1642696953
Mars marketing: "We need a revamp of our M&Ms logo!"\n\nDesigner: *rotates current logo 8\u00b0*\n\nMarketing: "Perfect!"pic.twitter.com/34fklKKpmR— Omar G. (@Omar G.) 1642698688
what\u2019s joe bidens plan to bring back the green m&ms sexy go go boots?pic.twitter.com/jVTC4JcYby— ratatouille fanatic (simp arc) (@ratatouille fanatic (simp arc)) 1642737433
Y\u2019know I always thought the m&ms characters were gross looking so I really wouldn\u2019t mind a design change but idk why they didn\u2019t just say \u201cwe\u2019re changing the designs\u201d like unless they\u2019re giving the m&ms crutches and fades idk why they had to say they\u2019re making it \u2018inclusive\u2019 lol— AstroBoto (@AstroBoto) 1642905410
M&ms said they're making them more inclusive but only changed the design of green? Then when you go to the site to see what changed you're greeted with this.. So do you want them to be sexy or not? pic.twitter.com/h5ZgL7TK9y— CheekyBat \ud83d\udc95\ud83e\udd87 (@CheekyBat \ud83d\udc95\ud83e\udd87) 1642777397
Mars Inc. is aware of the conversation happening online right now.
They tweeted about it—but not by addressing any of the actual feedback.
They opted to let the green m&m and "her effortless confidence" take the lead.
Did my shoes really break the internet?pic.twitter.com/ZaisgZ9QYZ— M&M'S (@M&M'S) 1642716357
The invisible changes nobody asked for will go into effect immediately.