Coon cheese renamed Cheer Cheese after six-month search for new name
January 13, 2021
The makers of Coon Cheese have unveiled a new name for the well-known dairy product after a six-month process to give the 85-year-old brand a new identity.
Cheer Cheese will appear in supermarkets around the country from July, according to a statement from Canadian-owned parent company Saputo Dairy Australia, released on Wednesday morning.
Saputo has owned the Coon brand since 2015. In July 2020, the company announced it would “retire” the Coon Cheese name in response to increasing calls for brands to move away from product names that have racist connotations.
Coon Cheese Rebrands as Cheer Following Pressure by Activist
The makers of Coon cheese have announced that Cheer will be the rebranded name for its famous Australian product following pressure from an Aboriginal activist who said the original name was racist.
Saputo Dairy Australia on Jan. 13 said the name change to Cheer was to honour its consumers by aligning with “current attitudes and perspectives.”
The move comes after Aboriginal activist Stephen Hagan reignited his campaign first attempted in 1999 after seeing Nestle rebrand Allen’s Red Skins and Chicos lollies to Red Rippers and Cheekies in 2020.
Amid the Black Lives Matter (BLM) movement’s resurgence which was founded by Marxist organisers in July 2020 Hagan was successful in convincing Saputo to change the name.
The Coon name will be retired after 85 years amid concerns over its racist connotations. Saputo, the dairy company that owns the cheese, will relaunch the product as Cheer in July after six months of deliberations over a new name. The name Cheer has the significance of pleasure and joy, Saputo s chief executive Lino Saputo said. It s nice when you take a picture you say cheese and when you give a toast you say cheers. We took some time to think about this, we wanted to do the proper due diligence and consulted with different focus groups and we narrowed it down to three to five names and resoundingly consumers thought this was the right reflection of what we re bringing for families.