Selling the Subaltern
Dec 4th, 2009 by Erin Kim
Summary:
This TV commercial for Tim Hortons opens with an idyllic shot of Central American mountains, followed by images of indigenous farmers planting and harvesting coffee. Dan Schroeder, the president and CEO of Tim Hortons, explains the motivation behind the company’s Coffee Partnership program: one which claims to provide “the perfect conditions for growing better coffee.” As buyers of Central and South American coffee, Schroeder claims that a desire to transform farmers into “successful businessmen” and give back to the communities which provide the coffee is at the heart of the project. According to Tim Hortons, “giving back” translates into helping farmers grow better coffee. “They [indigenous farmers] don’t want anything for free,” says Schroeder, and an unnamed farmer is subsequently shown expressing his wish to become a “businessman”. A voiceover lauds the Tim Hortons Coffee Partnership for having improved the lives of 2000 farmers: scenes of children in schools and textbooks (with the Tim Hortons logo emblazoned on the front covers) being unloaded are shown, and the commercial draws to a close with Schroeder stating “We don’t believe in just writing cheques and walking away.” The motto for the program is “Making a True Difference.”
Commentary:
At first glance, the Tim Hortons Coffee Partnership program appears to be a positive, empowering project for the subaltern indigenous coffee farmers Central and South America who are involved. A closer examination of the program, however, reveals otherwise.
Tim Hortons’ coffee is not fair trade. Instead, the company favours its approach of working directly with the growers: “establishing technical training, through direct financial assistance, to improve the quantity and quality of coffee produced”; “consulting farmers to ensure their coffee gets to market at the best time and at the best price”; “providing assistance in education and medical care”; and “strengthening environmental management by educating farmers on enhanced [presumably Western] farming techniques and reforestation projects.”
While some coffee farmers may genuinely benefit from these methods, in actuality the root purpose of the project appears to be securing the quality and availability of the raw materials that Tim Hortons’ business is based on. The successes of the program boasted on the website have more to do with the “better grades of coffee” produced and increased yields after the implementation of the program. In addition, the education provided to beneficiaries of the Partnership in Santa Maria, Colombia includes access to a “coffee quality lab”.
The case of the Tim Hortons Coffee Partnership illustrates a particular attempt of a corporate entity to engage in a kind of d/Development project. Seeing this commercial brought to mind a comment that one of our guest speakers, Dawn, mentioned in her lecture. Dawn said that she was suspicious of any corporation which claimed to have purely benevolent intentions, and I have to say I agree. By directly referencing the Coffee Partnership in its advertising, Tim Hortons is appealing to a growing public desire to be “responsible consumers” (perhaps arising out of Western over-consumerist guilt?). Showcasing what at least superficially looks like positive change come out of a daily coffee purchase is a shrewd advertising strategy, and reinforces the fact that the primary objective of any corporation is to make profit. And as Tim Hortons’ Coffee Partnership illustrates, any charitable outcome that results is a by-product of that aim.
(A more detailed 3-minute video from which the TV commercial was derived is available on the Tim Hortons website (http://www.timhortons.com/ca/en/goodwill/coffee-partnership.html). The information about the program that I cited in this post is available on that page as well.)
9 Responses to “Selling the Subaltern”
Daniel Mundeva
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After watching the video, I gotta admit the commercial is very well filmed. Everything they say sounds good but is not shown or proven on how they are being done. Using words like “giving back” and “making better coffee”. How are they giving back to their community by helping them make better coffee? How are they making better coffee? All these are subjective and have not been proven or shown how it is done. They showed the scenes of children in schools and textbooks (with the Tim Hortons logo emblazoned on the front covers). What does that have to do with making better coffee? I’m assuming that the commerical is trying to show how they are helping people there with their lives. But are they donating towards their education? Just by showing a logo on their textbook does not mean anything. All I can say is, this commerical is very nicely filmed that benefits them and does not seem to be helping the subaltern.
The first thing that popped into my mind when I saw this video is how similar it is to the Starbucks videos I watched while I worked there. I agree with Erin that over-consumerist guilt is the reason why companies such as Tim Hortons and Starbucks nowadays are trying to appear as practicing “corporate responsibility”.
As Erin mentioned, Tim Hortons is looking out for its own interests (ie profit) and using the act of “helping poor farmers in Latin America grow coffee” as a marketing tool. Clearly there is a conflict of interest here. Tim Hortons is a business, and its number one goal is to maximize profits. I’m skeptical about the notion that helping indigenous farmers become “successful businessmen” has anything to do with that. Tim Hortons is still involved in the process of accumulation by dispossession (Harvey) where Tim Hortons is accumulating wealth by dispossessing the indigenous farmers. I think the best way to counter this is by supporting local development initiatives, not by buying Tim Hortons coffee.
I agree with Kelvin, I actually watched the video before I read your commentary and basically thought you were going to talk about fair trade coffee. To me that means two things, genius marketing and the ongoing trend of corporate dishonesty is not changing. I was honestly shocked when your text said that TH’s wasn’t part of the fair trade coffee program because of the way the commercial was filmed.
What more can someone say than after reading the facts (which most people would not do) this is just really good advertising making it seem like TH is part of something they are not.
I think its interesting that the main selling point in the commercial is that Tim Hortons is giving back by helping farmers grow better coffee. Just as Kevin mentioned, I don’t really see how that necessarily benefits the coffee farmers. Rather its an appeal to customers that Tim Hortons is now buying better coffee beans. Also the word ‘success’ and ‘successful’ is used a lot in the commercial but it is never outlined what it necessarily means in context. This makes it quite questionable as to whether its initiative is actually making an impact.
A side not I’d like to add is; as the advertisement is only a minute long, possibly some of our criticisms would be answered if they had more time to elaborate?
I found the Tim Horton’s motto for their program, “Making a True Difference” very ironic because it does seem like they are truly helping anyone but themselves. The word “true” seems to imply that they are making an effective difference and really helping the indigenous farmers even though in reality as Erin said Tim Horton’s coffee is not fair trade. Hence the company is creating this ideal image of corporations helping the poor simply out of the kindness of their heart. They only seemed concerned with furthering their own interests and promoting capitalism and free market ideals. I agree with both Erin and Wanyee that Tim Horton’s and other corporations create commercials such as this one to relieve the guilt that consumers feel. By making consumers feel better about themselves when buying Tim Horton’s products the company is able to sell more goods and thus make more money. They are simply looking out for their best interests not those of the farmers they depict as helping.
Tim Horton’s is not just selling the subaltern, they are selling an image of themselves as a socially conscious coffee company. So many companies claim to be participating in some kind of trade that benefits the growers (often not necessarily Faire Trade, and therefore their claims can lack substance). The truth behind these claims vary greatly, as we can compare a company like Tim Horton’s to that of a company that is actually a collective of farmers empowering themselves.
As mentioned earlier, Tim Horton’s has an economic strategy in all of this. Increasing the efficiency of their farmers (through technical assistance, education, etc.) decreases the price of their input, thus decreasing the price of their production. Some coffee companies charge much more for a cup that is made from “ethical” beans, so they could even raise their prices! Overall, their terms of trade would increase significantly if this advertising ploy works.
As Wanyee said before, this video DOES resemble the videos shown to Starbucks employees during their training. Substitute the Tim Horton’s logo with Starbucks and you pretty much have the same video. This summer while I worked at Starbucks, I was shocked and amazed by the videos they used to “train”[slash brainwash?] their workers portraying Starbucks as an amazing helper in the development of small coffee farmers. I even recall a “Fair Trade” poster being hung right outside the employee backroom entrance. Fair trade is an important issue within the advertising techniques of corporations such as Tim Horton’s and Starbucks. While this video makes the audience think and believe that Tim Horton’s is following ideals of fair trade, the actuality as Erin pointed out is quite different. These companies are appealing to the consumer’s guilt complex and advertising in such a way that makes them appear to be something that they might not embody in actuality.
I Googled Starbucks + fair trade and stumbled upon this little article from the Global Exchange website:
“Coffee farmers are becoming even more impoverished, going further into debt and losing their land due to extremely low world coffee prices. Meanwhile coffee companies such as Starbucks have not lowered consumer prices but are pocketing the difference, even taking into account the quality premiums in the specialty industry.
According to Fair Trade Labeling Organizations International, Fair Trade farmers sell only about 20% of their coffee at a Fair Trade price. The rest is sold at the world price, due to lack of demand. Demand can be created by large corporations selling Fair Trade.
Since 2000, consumers have been demanding that Starbucks offer BREWED Fair Trade coffee as well as whole bean. Many Starbucks cafes will brew a pot of Fair Trade – but only if specifically asked. Meanwhile Fair Trade Coffee has yet to be promoted as the brewed Coffee of the Day, which is the only way to ensure real volume for Fair Trade Farmers.”
In this excerpt it is painfully obvious that profit maximizing is at the top of the list of these corporations while they make it appear that they are more interested in humanity than they actually are. Videos such as this one exaggerate and over idealize the impact that big coffee corporations like Starbucks and Tim Horton’s have on small coffee farmers in the Global South.
http://www.globalexchange.org/campaigns/fairtrade/coffee/starbucks.html link to Global Exchange article.
After reading all your comments, I also did a google search on tim hortons and I found this article:
http://www.coffeehabitat.com/2007/12/tim-hortons-cof.html
It makes me sad to see a company like Tim Hortons which creates an image of it being this great “low-key” company that really focuses on helping the Canadian community and after seeing this helping the communities in the South.
But it’s true, it’s just an image they are giving. What are they doing to really help the people down there other than giving them things to hold that has “TIM HORTONS” all over them to give the impression to the viewer they are helping?
In the end, they are really trying to help themselves. It is a business first and they want to do what makes them look better to gain more business.
While Tim Horton’s is promoting themselves as a socially conscious company, improving the lives of historically marginalized coffee farmers, at the end of the day they’re still a business that must answer to investors and maximize their profit margin. It would be ideal for Tim Horton’s to participate in fair trade coffee but it would make it difficult for them to compete within the market. It seems a little dishonest for them to say that they are truly empowering the coffee farmers when they are not actually doing everything they can to do so but as it has been mentioned this is simply used as a marketing strategy to promote their business so I don’t really see the harm in it. While they could be doing more to help these workers, what they’re doing is better than nothing at all.