A ten-year-old Emirati has helped break down stereotypes across the region and influence the product packaging of a 100-year-old multi-billion dollar brand.
Balki Radhakrishnan, vice president and managing director, Asia, Middle East and Africa, General Mills – who own the world-renowned Betty Crocker brand – revealed that the Emirati youngster, known as Sultan, had been enjoying baking using the famous mixtures and recipes.
However, through a tweet from his sister, he questioned why the instructions, printed in Arabic, were geared towards females.
Radhakrishnan told Arabian Business: “In Arabic, the way it’s written, you can be very gender-specific in the language and the choice of words that you use in your baking instructions.
“That insight really led us to think about it. We brought in a linguist expert to actually re-write our instructions. This has gone into 20 million packs of Betty Crocker mixes, right before the pandemic. We’re calling it the ‘kitchen is for everyone’.”
Betty Crocker, which is celebrating its 100th birthday this year, registered “double-digit” growth in sales over the Covid-19-enforced lockdown period, as individuals and families swapped the café culture for home cooking and brunches for baking.
“In this environment when consumers and society can drive certain gender stereotypes, to actually break that and say the kitchen is for everyone, this has gained an incredible amount of traction with our consumers; not just women, men, kids, adults, older age groups, everybody,” said Radhakrishnan.
“We’ve got Saudi male bakers tweeting about it. We’ve got Instagrammers following it.”
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