POSTCOLONIALISM

Banania History This popular children's breakfast drink combines sugar, chocolate, three grains (wheat flour, barley flour, and malted wheat flour), banana, and honey. Its history is a case study in marketing. In 1909, while traveling in Nicaragua, banker and journalist turned adventurer Pierre Lardet discovered a drink based on banana flour, crushed grains, cocoa, and sugar. Upon his return to France, he recreated this miracle drink with the help of a pharmacist friend. He began selling the product in 1912, emphasizing its supposed health benefits, and trademarked the recipe in 1914. The first tins featured the image of a smiling Antillaise. In 1915, a new image appeared, that of a Senegalese sharpshooter, a figure much on the minds of the French as tens of thousands of Senegalese fought in the trenches of WWI. His red and blue uniform provided a striking contrast to the yellow background, the yellow evoking the still-exotic banana. Never one to miss a PR opportunity, Lardet shipped 14 wagons of Banania to the troops on the front lines to give them "force et vigeur." Company legend has it that the trademark slogan "y'a bon," pidgin French for "it's good," came about when an injured Senegalese infantryman, hired to work in the Banania factory, pronounced his opinion on the drink. During WWII the factory, being in occupied France, was closed; it reopened near Clermont Ferrand, using a modified recipe because of wartime shortages. And the marketing went on, rife with dark wartime humor: "DCA: Défense contre l'anémie" (defense against anemia, playing on the acronym for defense contre avions, antiaircraft guns); "Après l'alerte, c'est le réconfort" (after the bomb alert, the comfort), "Tous les matins, je réquisitionne mon Banania" (every morning I requisition my Banania). In the years since WWII, the company has been sold and resold, and the advertising character became more and more stylized, until 1987, when the slogan was retired and the image replaced by more abstract drawings, first of a smiling sun, then of small boy. In 1999, probably thinking to capitalize on nostalgia, the company resurrected a stylized reprensentation of the Senegalese that had first appeared in 1959; In 2003 new owner Nutrial brought back the "y 'a bon" slogan. The strategy backfired. A group of Antillese, Guyanese, and Reunionese took the company to court, arguing that the image and slogan were racist and insulting. A compromise was reached in 2006 whereby the image was kept and the slogan dropped.