On February 2nd, 2014, Super Bowl XLVIII was played between the Seattle Seahawks and Denver Broncos. As usual, the game itself received a lot of media attention, but one thing that also did was a simple minute-long Coca-Cola commercial that played during the game. The commercial is made up of short clips of people of all races dancing, eating, bowling, socializing, overlaid with the song "America the Beautiful". However, instead of being sung in English as one might expect, each part of the song is sung in a different language, which matches the race or ethnic background of the person or people in the clip that song section overlays. To the average viewer the Coca-Cola commercial is probably very cute, but to many, its point and the way the point was made were disgraceful.
Historically, racial and ethnic minorities in the United States have not been given fair treatment or representation. Fortunately, Coca-Cola clearly opposes this, as the actors in its Super Bowl commercial come from a variety of ethnic and religious backgrounds; some, like the Jewish men in the yarmulkes and Muslim women in the hijabs, are even wearing traditional outfits. They also sing "America the Beautiful" in languages other than English, including Spanish and Hebrew. Since none of these people are shown doing anything bad or out of the ordinary and are all singing a traditional patriotic song, the message is clear; all people in the United States are equal and all can be patriotic Americans. Coca-Cola used a very simple method of getting their message of equality across, so the point of the commercial was easily conveyed to the audience. The audience members understood exactly what Coca-Cola was conveying, and many were disgusted. They claimed that people like those in the commercial could not possibly be true Americans if they could not or would sing "America the Beautiful" in English, that Arabic was the language of "terrorists" and Spanish the language of "illegals", and that Coca-Cola was "on the road to perdition". Even though all level-headed and open-minded people decried this racist criticism and agreed with the message in the commercial, the criticism still got Coca-Cola more media attention and probably caused more people to see the commercial. The simplicity of the commercial's point made it easy to understand for everyone who saw it, and their views on it, whether positive or negative, got Coca-Cold a spot in the headlines and helped the company to spread their message of equality.
Link to video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9MEsOzzunPQ
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