Doing the Super Bowl Wrong
Stephen Parr
When you spend four million dollars per 30 second spot and your advertisement angers a large section of your customer base, you're doing it wrong. That's what happened with Coca Cola's multilingual America The Beautiful Super Bowl commercial.
Many of Coke's customers were offended and angered by the spot. They have expressed their outrage on the company's Facebook page. (Coke hasn't really monitored that page well, so the complaints have devolved into a typical internet flame war between those offended and those who liked the ad.) Singing God Bless America in spanish to a domestic audience is like singing God Save the Queen to Londoners in french. Some people are likely to interpret that message in a way it may not have been intended.
Whether you personally liked or disliked that ad isn't the thrust of this article. I'm not trying to persuade you on the merits of the message one way or the other. But I do think this is an opportunity to talk about how the message a company sends is not always the message customers receive.
The soft drink market in the United States is already saturated and has been for a long time. It's not like Americans are going to start drinking a lot more soda than we already do. There are only so many hours in a day! So, the point of television advertising for Coke isn't so much to gather new customers as it is to protect the market share it already possesses. If this ad - the same ad that has angered so many of Coke's current customers - was designed to defend Coke's turf, it's doing it about as well as the Broncos did during the big game.
How did Coke not see this coming? They had to have tested this with focus groups before it aired. Failure to test a commercial that costs four million dollars per 30 seconds would be gross negligence for an advertiser. So that means that either no member of their focus groups was offended, or those who were offended didn't feel free enough to express their opinions, or their opinions were expressed and Coke chose to ignore the points raised. The end result is a version of group think. Either differing viewpoints weren't properly sought and encouraged or those viewpoints were discarded because the advertisers knew better.
Now that Coca Cola is aware many of its customers are angry, they are making another mistake. Instead of acknowledging the feelings of the offended, Coke is dismissive. Katie Bayne, president of Coca Cola North America is quoted in USA TODAY as saying, "We hope the ad gets people talking and thinking about what it means to be proud to be American." That's not Coke's job! Their job is to sell soft drinks. Angering your American customers and then telling them they aren't thinking correctly about what it means to be American is a great way to get people to sample Dr. Pepper.
As a marketer and a story teller, the saddest part of this episode is that it's an unforced error. It's like hiking the ball on the first play of the Super Bowl for a safety. It didn't have to be this way. Change the music from the multilingual version to Ray Charles' version of the same song and you have a masterpiece. It would have the exact same message Coke intended - that America is great because of its diversity - without the offending lingual subtext. It might not end up as beloved as the 1970s I'd Like to Teach the World to Sing commercial, but it certainly wouldn't have caused a negative reaction.
Can Coca Cola survive this episode? Of course. This company managed to make it through New Coke, after all. But, how many other companies could say the same thing? Maybe Exxon could. Apple would take a pretty big hit but would probably weather through. But, what about your company? Could you afford to alienate a large section of your customer base in an effort to educate them on how to be better Americans?
When you are trying to communicate to your customers, either through television, print, or social media, make sure you know what you are trying to say, why you're trying to say it and how that message will be received. Any missteps in those three points will turn your message into a mess.