I was at the freezer case at the Fred Meyer on Hawthorne last week, holding a pint of Salt & Straw I could not justify, when I remembered the ice cream that is not there anymore.
Walmart made a Great Value Juneteenth ice cream. Red velvet cheesecake. The lid invited shoppers to share and celebrate African-American culture, community and traditions, in the same cheerful house type the brand uses for birthday cake flavor. It hit shelves, went around the internet in a day, and came back off with a statement about respecting the significance of the holiday.
I keep thinking about the meeting where it got approved.
Because there was a meeting. There is always a meeting. Somebody built a deck. Somebody added a slide noting the holiday went federal last year. Somebody in category management saw an unclaimed window between Memorial Day and the Fourth of July. Nobody asked whether Walmart had earned the right to sell this at all.
A brand cannot participate in a holiday it has done nothing for, and a SKU is not participation.
Juneteenth marks the delayed arrival of freedom for enslaved people in Texas, two and a half years after emancipation was declared. It is a story about information withheld for profit. Selling it back as a novelty flavor at $3.98 is not a miss in the creative. It is the entire premise, restated in a colder aisle.
Here is the part that gets lost. The failure was not the product. It was the approval path. The Juneteenth item cleared the same gates a pumpkin spice item clears, because the system treats a holiday as a demand signal rather than a subject with living people attached to it. Nobody in that workflow is empowered to say no on grounds that are not financial. So nobody says no.
I have watched this from inside brand strategy rooms. The rooms are not malicious. They are unaccompanied. Nine people with a P&L and nobody at the table who will be personally implicated by the answer. Ben & Jerry's does not make this mistake, and not because their people are better. They built a real position and a structure that lets someone stop the line.
So the test is boring and it works. Before you put your logo on a date, answer three things. What did you do about this in February. Who in your building belongs to this community, and what happened when they talked. What would you still be doing if there were nothing to ring up.
It is a story about information withheld for profit.
Barnaby has no position on Juneteenth. He has a position on the freezer door, which is that it should stay open indefinitely for his review. I bought the Salt & Straw and went home. The other thing, the thing the deck was selling, was never really ice cream.