Wednesday, November 26, 2014

12255: Coke’s Lily-White Christmas.

A new Coca-Cola holiday commercial from Ogilvy (apparently originally produced with Coca-Cola Germany) forgoes the polar bears for Santa Claus, Jimmy Durante and slice-of-life scenarios. However, it’s a predominately White Christmas, with only one background Black person and an ambiguous Asian/Latina character in the entire 60-second spot. Where the hell was OgilvyCulture while this contrived shit was being storyboarded?

3 comments:

AmIagain said...

It's tough to find people of color in Hungary. That's where this was filmed. It's a miracle you could even spot the one black guy, because that's probably the ONE black guy in the whole country.

Coke is happy to sell product to blacks and Latinos and Asians in the US, but they don't ever use them to make their ads.

HighJive said...

Understood, Amlagain. That’s why the post noted the spot was originally produced with Coca-Cola Germany. However, Coke and Ogilvy now apparently plan to run this shit in the U.S.—which demonstrates real ignorance and cultural cluelessness on their part. And you’re wrong about Coke not using minorities in their ads. The company used to employ minority shops to produce targeted campaigns, and Coke probably still has executives assigned to addressing non-White audiences.

AmIagain said...

Coke definitely uses minorities. They stuff ambiguous looking actors who can be Asian or Latin in their commercials all the time, so they can get more bang for their advertising buck and air in multiple markets.

What I mean is they don't use anyone from those communities in the US to make their ads. Coke used to employ minority shops but no more. Now they just reuse agencies and footage from Brazil when they want something black and call it a day and hope no one will notice. They do have execs assigned to addressing non-White audiences but look close and those "experts" are all white themselves. Funny how that works.

In other words Coca-Cola shows zero biz commitment to the minority audiences they target.