Carrots - The Ulitmate Branding Example

Orange carrots - a branding exercise of success! 

We all know carrots right? Those orange things that you buy from the green grocer or supermarket. 

But that's not it at all. 

Carrots were not always orange in colour and making this the default colour was a deliberate tactic to associate the colour with a family and it is unlikely that orange carrots even existed prior to the 16th century. Before this time carrots were white or yellow or purple. 

So why are carrots Orange? According to Susan Broomhall Winthrop Professor of Early Modern History at University of Western Australia  the story ...

They were bred orange in The Netherlands during the 17th century from the older white and purple stock (that are now back in fashion as “heritage” varieties) to show support for the Orange-Nassau dynasty.

The Orange-Nassau were the leading family of The Netherlands from the mid-16th century (and are now its royal family).

The Dutch royal family on the balcony after the abdication of Queen Beatrix, April 2013.Wikimedia Commons

As the northern provinces of the Low Countries sought to break away from the Catholic Habsburg Philip II, who ruled from distant Spain,William of Orange-Nassau emerged as the only aristocrat with the power, influence and finances to lead them.

William and his family were to number among the leading Protestant families of Western Europe – although this didn’t stop a number of them from converting to Lutheranism or even Catholicism along the way.

William of Orange and his sons might have been successful military and political leaders and the prominent faces of the dynasty – but its women were doing plenty to increase the family’s hold on power in other, equally visible, ways during the period.

After a 12-year truce had been signed with Spain in 1609, the Orange-Nassau dynasty entered a new phase of influence.  See more

The Orange component was named after a town in southern France and it was this part, which identified their particular branch, which became a key tool in the dynasty’s strategic public relations.

The four daughters of Frederick Henry and Amalia, for example, all created new palaces and castles named after their family: Oranjewoud, Oranienstein, Oranienburg, and Oranienbaum. They even painted the buildings orange and planted orange trees in their gardens.

Fruit and veg brand marketing

So provocative were orange carrots seen to be in the early modern period that, at various points, they were banned from sale in Dutch markets as the fortunes of the dynasty waxed and waned politically.

Abraham Van den Tempel, Albertina Agnes of Orange-Nassau and her children (1668). Her daughter Amalia prominently holds a sprig of orange blossom. Wikimedia Commons

If eating humble carrots was the way that the general public could show support for the family, exotic oranges were the dynasty’s own particular fruit for brand marketing.

Politics and intrigue! A very good outcome and example of branding that has stood the test of time - and become the default association for this humble vegetable.