Coca-Cola’s Super Bowl advertisement, “America the Beautiful” is absolutely beautiful and ingenious.
Premiering the multi-language rendition of “America the Beautiful” during the Super Bowl was gutsy. Hindi, Arabic, Swahili, Hebrew, Mandarin and several other languages were represented alongside English in the Coca-Cola commercial. Coca-Cola had to have anticipated the controversy of revamping a timeless, American song, especially when xenophobia runs rampant in this nation. Yet, Coca-Cola transcended the backlash hash tagged in #SpeakAmerican, in order to portray their product in a true “melting-pot” fashion.
While Coca-Cola was attempting to sell a product and expand the reach of the very popular Coca-Cola brand, the company managed to catalyze a new conversation to equality among ethnicities and women, as most of the delightful singers were women and girls. This shows the power of media marketing. Like so many advertisements, media has the power to impact the conversation of it’s viewers. What better time to initiate buzz on a product and an ideal than to premiere a diverse and innovative advertisement during the most televised moment in American television?
While Twitter and social media is alight with comments, both negative and positive, Coca-Cola only benefits. First, their colossal brand is being spoken about more often. Second, the ideal that America is a melting pot made for every gender and every ethnicity is sparked into conversation. Coca-Cola did something absolutely phenomenal with their advertising, which makes me want to support them even more. I’m so glad that instead of being deterred by the controversy surrounding #SpeakAmerican, that Coca-Cola responded by lengthening the commercial and showing it during the Olympics and Sochi.
Way to go, Coca-Cola.
Musings of Media 