Coca Cola’s Super Bowl ad celebrates America’s melting pot by having people sing “America the Beautiful” in several languages. It’s a lovely idea, although it won’t get me to drink a carbonated soda. What’s amazing is the folks who were offended by the ad. There were a few dozen showing up at the #boycottcoke hashtag at Twitter, but then they were outnumbered by people who either liked the ad or had a better reason to boycott Coke.
Victoria Wyatt summed up the kerfluffle well in a comment at Coca-Cola’s Facebook page.
I don't know what is funnier - the complainers who think we speak "American", the complainers who think "America the Beautiful" is our national anthem, or the complainers who do not have full command of the language they're demanding.We should note that one of the languages used in the song is Pueblo, a Native American language.
Some of the Conservative complainers about the ad criticized ut for showing a "gay couple." The woman who wrote the words to "America the Beautiful" lived with another woman in a committed relationship and published a number of poems about her.
ReplyDeleteThe sceptic in me thinks that the "controversy" over the ad is all part of the plan, and is in fact fake. I mean really? Who cares?
ReplyDeleteThis is not unprecedented. Film studios have used this technique for decades to market films. Howard Hughes created a fake grass root outrage over his film "The Outlaw" in order to get people interested in seeing it just see what was so scandalous about it.
I'm sure those super expensive ad houses plan for social network based chatter about ads they sell to their clients.