Seattle won the game part.
The commercials were won by Coca Cola.
Apparently, right wing nuts are having a meltdown over the desecration of using non-English lyrics. I don’t know why, they ought to be overjoyed to see a megacorporation cunningly using diversity and natural beauty to sell people sugar water and making patriotic music an ode to capitalism.
Even though the company is a bunch of corporate crooks, I dislike their products intensely, and their Australian subsidiary tries to milk the teat of government assistance to the tune of $A50M, I like the advert. Hats off to the adwriters.
As soon as I looked up and saw what the Coke commercial was doing, my first thought was “cue the wing nuts.” They are so, so reliable.
Just prior to the game, I read that the Cheerios commercial, with the mixed race family, was a follow up to an earlier commercial that attracted vicious, racist comments on YouTube. This time around, they have employees scouting the comments and keeping them family friendly.
Where I work, there are people of northern European, southern European, Asian, Central American, South American, African, and some multi-ethnic descent. In other words, we resemble the commercial. Welcome to America.
Forgot to mention the guy with Cherokee in his lineage.
Yeah, as soon as I saw the commercial I remembered the melt downs a few years back when some Mexicans sang the US national anthem is Spanish. Sure we won’t have long to wait for the response.
The game part would have been more interesting if the Broncos hadn’t been replaced with a troop of special needs Girl Scouts on tranquilizers.
Love the commercial, enjoying the freakout from the usual subjects.
I had to stop reading the comments about the ad on twitter… The meltdown was disheartening to read.
The only disheartening thing about these meltdowns is the way MSNBC made those pathetic, simpering apologies to the Republicans simply because they pointed out that right-wingers were complaining about it. I have no problems letting the bigots out themselves so we know exactly which people suck.
Acknowledging that there are people in your country that speak languages other than “American”, That is just ludicrous.
On top of that, I will never understand people that obsess over the symbols of a country and the right way to present them. Be it a flag, a song, a pledge, or whatever else it might be.
It’s sad that in the middle of the ad when it aired all I could think of was “oh hell, the RWNJs are going to freak out”. I thought it was beautiful.
I thought this ad was beautiful. I didn’t notice the two men roller-skating together with their daughter, the first time araound. That bit is getting some press on NBC’s website as the first gay family in a Superbowl ad. I caught it here and liked it.
@gridlore #6: special needs Girl Scouts on tranquilizers.
The fuck? Oh yay let us degrade both disabled people and girls in one swoop. GAH.
___
Knew there would be an exploding head contingent the second the Coke commercial changed from English, and also loved the Cheerios commercial that I took as basically a sweet “fuck off” to everyone who freaked out about that adorable girl and her biracial family. Baby sibling and a puppy, that’s killing ’em with cute if ever I saw it.
Does anyone know what the languages in the commercial were?
Coke gets points for having a very diverse commercial with a massive audience.
Coke loses points for sponsoring the Sochi games and giving tacit approval to Olympics security forces arresting LGBT protesters.
The company does have high marks for good employment practices, so I’m willing to give them the benefit of the doubt that they’re between a rock and a hard place on the Olympics. Not supporting the Olympics would be viewed as un-American and a huge loss of cash, while supporting the Olympics risks alienating the LGBT community.
The bookies said “Denver”.
Even Nate Silver was surprised by the final score.
Three cheers for defying expectations
@NelC #13:
Hindi, Tagalog, Spanish, Arabic, English, for starters. Business Wire says seven languages total but I don’t know what the two others are and haven’t yet found in my searches.
The cesspit that is Free Republic was as reliable as ever:
These clowns use “real Americans” without the slightest self-consciousness. Apparently, “real Americans” are supposed to be rabid bigots with mediocre English skills.
I really hope Coca Cola’s response is not some horrible, wishy, washy attempt to make people like this feel better. Ideally they would release a press release that told them to fuck off, but sadly I cannot see them doing that.
If you follow the link to the playlist ( http://youtube.com/AmericaIsBeautiful ), it has Spanish, Tagalog, Hindi, Senegalese-French, Hebrew, Mandarin, Keres, Arabic, English versions of the song.
Keres, I see, is the name for one of the Puebloan languages of New Mexico. There are more well-known Amerindian languages (Navajo; Cherokee) that they could have used, but it’s probably a good thing that they used at least one.
Well, I dislike a huge multinational corporate producer of carbonated poison using cheap pandering to patriotism. But I like that they decided our side was the side to pander to. Although considering they want to sell their poison to *everybody* it doesn’t take a genius to market it to more than just a single homogenous minority.
So what was this Cheerios ad? The previous ad that got the outcry was pretty cute and, well…, innocuous.
Backlash. It’s just freakin’ backlash with no substance but simple non-thinking backlash…
I don’t know, this could be a valid use of the notpology. “We’re sorry you’re offended, but…” works well here.
Cheerios Ad: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LKuQrKeGe6g&gclid=COiHk5Sir7wCFclkKgodXnQAAA&gclsrc=ds
Ah! The exact same family returns. And they’re *growing*! Which is really kind of the ultimate “fuck off” to the bigots who complained about the family in the first place. Good show, cheerios! (And I thought the girl was funnier and even cuter this time [because this time she was smart!])
The Coke commercial was nice. It did bug me a bit that they kept showing people drinking from glass bottles that you can’t actually get the product in unless it’s imported from Mexico.
I am not convinced many of them would understand the notpology is meaningless and is really not an appology. I would like them to know Coca Cola doesn’t really see them as being important.
Maybe if it came in the form of “we’re sorry you’re offended, but that’s what happens when you’re a vile bigoted piece of shit.”
Too subtle?
You might want to realize that to a company like Coca Cola even the whole of the US is just a regional market. These people think in continents.
Their message of interracial unity and international cooperation looks pretty but the motivation is that as a US based company they must sell their product across the globe. This is the only way to can continue to do this. The message in this ad is as much a message to the rest of the world as to the US market.
It is also because of that they cannot and will not bow to the US bigots. Not only are those a very small market and irrelevant group on the global scale but taking their side will hurt their image and sales with all other factions.
Looking past the obvious and well grounded ad hom I say I like the message. (But think the messenger is ugly and has ulterior motives.)
The marketing world needs a few more not-geniuses who can grasp that.
You know the f’n right wing nut jobs the true patriotic American pro-capitalism tea bagging fool just does not have any real loyalty to free market capitalism they so loudly defend nor any real understanding of what it might actually be. That rabble that the republicans conned into supporting them with the “southern strategy” back with Nixon are a very dangerous ignorant bunch. When they finally realize that the republican / conservative “leaders” are just using them to get power and do not give a fig for all of that patriotic crap. That rabble is just as likely to turn on them as not they are not a rational compassionate bunch. unlike the “bleeding heart liberals”
Coke has been running adds showing third world sellers and dealers for some time now
uncle frogy
I would have thought a commercial like this would be strongly criticized for promoting American imperialism, as it implies that American values should be appreciated as global values. But since this was in the context of the Super Bowl, it would be redundant to criticize.
But how can anyone consider this message anti-American? The logic of the American right wing never ceases to amaze me.
Oh give me a break.
Isn’t meltdown their default state?
You might want to realize just how parochial an event Superbowl is:
With regard to selling their shit-coloured and shit-tasting carbonated sugar-water globally, I’ll bet Coca-Cola focus their sports advertising on football – sorry, “soccer” – games.
Oh, that advert is fucking epic :)
Ingredients:
10% cynical appeal to nationalism
90% win
I was completely surprised by the pushback, because as soon as the commercial started my thought was “Great, here we go wrapping the product up in a flag to push all those America is the Best Ever buttons and it will work just like that farmer commercial last year”, and then… nope.
“…right wing nuts are having a meltdown over the desecration of using non-English lyrics. I don’t know why…”
Apparently, there is no right wing or left wing. There are only racists and moderates. 100s of shades of racists are hiding behind all sorts of screens, torn and porous and many of us can see through it. That’s why.
Someone ought to tell them that our national anthem is taken from a Brititsh drinking song. Then stand back so you don’t get hit with exploding brains…
So when is a marketing guy going to spin this as Coke = good guys PESI = hateful bigots
Coke would like to thank everyone for all the positive feedback and support regarding our superbowl add. We would also like to apologize to PESI for unintentionally driving a horde of bigots to use your products… but only a little ;)
I am quite confused by you Americans. Can anyone tell me just what is so superb about this owl anyway?
How normalised to ubercapitalism does a nation have to be, for the advertising to become as talked-about as the major sporting event it interrupts?
…And of course the very first non-pharyngula discussion I saw about this ad was flooded by the “I’m totally not racist, but everyone should be forced to learn English” shitheads. Did you know that not imposing an official language leads to ‘balkanization’ and could totally destroy our nation? That’s a serious concern and not at all a paper-thin excuse to be a racist ass.
I considered pointing out these totally-not-racists are the same people who proclaim the free market to be our savior and asking why they don’t just let the free market determine if knowing English is a skill worth learning, but I’ve only got thirty minutes before I gotta leave for work and it’d take several times that long to get past all their dodging and corner them into answering it.
Idiots. The US market, saturated as it is, is just a fraction of Coke’s business.
“overseas sales account for two-thirds of Coke’s revenue (expected to total $21 billion this year) and three-quarters of operating income (forecast at $5.8 billion total) and over 90% of the giant brand’s profit growth” (Forbes, 2003). Not much change thereafter, but it’s still the overseas markets that drive the company’s growth.
There is a whole world with billions of non-Americans outside the US teabagger bubble.
And the scenes were shot on location all over the world.
As with a previous Superbowl, my vote goes to the Chrysler ad.
While this is indeed true, the Superb Owl is overwhelmingly viewed by Americans, in America. Also the whole “America the Beautiful” thing kind of tells you this commercial is not an international advertisement.
futurechemist:
Maybe in the US, but Coca-Cola is a global employer, and the situation in its overseas plants is often much less rosy. For example, trying to organise a union at one of its Colombian plants can get you murdered. Check out Belching Out the Devil: Global Adventures with Coca-Cola by Mark Thomas.
Last year, I heard a piece on the radio about how many immigrants might not be learning English, but their kids are. This was confirmed for me (albeit n=1) the same week when I was in line at at a grocery store with only two or three items. The woman ahead of me spoke to her pre-teen son in Spanish, and he then turned to me and said, “she wants you to go ahead af us.”
It should be noted that most Superbore ads aren’t seen in Canada. There’s a practice called simultaneous substitution in use up here. If a Canadian network s broadcasting an American program at the same time as the originating American network, the Canadian network’s feed will air on both channels. So during last night’s game Canadians saw the CTV feed, whether they were turned to CTV or Fox.
If the primary ad didn’t explode enough bigoted heads, the 5-minute version will help make up for it.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1ReHUMUb9gY
It’s almost like they anticipated the backlash, and had this other ad ready to fire.
Zeno at 17-
Which is odd given their usual “English only” mentality. One would think that would translate into them giving the language enough due to bother with proper spelling and such.
@15 anuran, apparently Nate Silver’s analysis didn’t take into account Denver’s scoring against second-rate teams, which made it look so good. I saw the comments of several fans who noticed that and didn’t think much of Denver’s chances.
@Kevin #46
Also the whole “America the Beautiful” thing kind of tells you this commercial is not an international advertisement.
Indeed. One wonders why Indians, Senegalese or Arabs should sing loudly that they find America beautiful… In the local ads the company seeks to avoid such negative impacts…
Indian CC ad
I know that plenty of people overseas watch the super bowl ads on Youtube and the like. It’s the one part of the superb owl that other countries pay attention to.
If the Coke commercial was the winner, then Goldie Blox was a close 2nd place.
What, the one with Bob Dylan going all “America, America, America” for an Italian-owned company?
steffp @50,
Maybe some of them do when they are Americans. See my link in post 47.
It seems pretty clear to me that this is not an ad intended for an international audience. It is targeted at people in the United States, and features people and locations from the United States.
corwyn @ 36
Another Super Bowl commercial informed me that British people are the best at being evil.
Hmmmmm. It all makes sense now.
@ #53:
This was the Superbowl. I didn’t set my criteria very high nor did I need to. And I have never like any form of cola.
If anyone’s curious: To Anacreon In Heaven.
@ Trebuchet #53
I thought the Chrysler ad had a nice theme, but a terrible execution. The previous Superbowl Chrysler ads with Eastwood and Eminem were better written and better produced. The opening line was really lame. (What’s more American than America? Well, hell, Bob, it’s hard to argue with that.) The closing line that went “Let Asians make your electronics, let Americans make your cars” was particularly tasteless, considering that those Asians are fucking kids working in sweatshops.
As for Dylan “selling out”, that’s been going on for years. First it was “going electric”, then “going country”, then “going Gospel”, and now “going commercial”. Bob’s going to do whatever the hell he wants. He’s never cared much about what his fans think of him. Nor does he need to care about what his fans think.
These people have a point. If you come to America, you should learn to speak the language–Ojibwa, Cree, Navajo….
Well, at least one of the languages.
(Sad to say, that makes me a bad American.)
tfkreference @45,
That’s a pretty common occurance in the USA; kids serve as interpreters for their parents in a lot of situations, including at the doctor’s. There’s a serious need for trained interpreters, but of course no money or lobby for them.
[citation needed]
You know, there are a lot of Americans who don’t pay attention to the overblown hype of the superbowl, either — except that we are surrounded by people who constantly promote it. I was at the grocery store and they were playing it over loudspeakers there.
corwyn @36:
“Knees up Mother Brown”?
According to a piece in Sports Illustrated in 2006, almost all of the people who watch the Super Bowl are in the United States.
http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/2006/writers/steve_rushin/02/03/rushin0206/
More-recent figures can be found here: http://www.sportingcharts.com/articles/nfl/how-many-people-watch-the-super-bowl-each-year.aspx It’s up to more than 100 million viewers now.
So, about 90% of the people who can watch it don’t watch it. And that includes more than half of the people in the U.S. (And in the interest of full disclosure, I am one of those people who does “somehow avoid watching a single minute of the game”.)
@ NickGotts, what methuseus said is not true in my experience. I live in France and watched the 1st half of the Suberb Owl. There were occasional ads, but for the most part the ad time was spent with showing NFL highlights. I don’t remember seeing a single Coke ad. I think the ads were local though I didn’t pay much attention. I knew the game was over after the first play: 2-0, but watched until the half at 2AM when it was clear who would win.
@57 Daz, thanks for the YT. I have a couple of purely audio versions that I posted when people talked about the National Anthem. Another funny song is the Marine Corps Hymn which is taken from a French comic opera by Jacques Offenbach, “The Gendarmes Duet”.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WIqsMpaTHY0
It is a song about two corrupt cowardly gendarmes.
Why did you have to pick such a lousy drinking song for your anthem, America? Is it too late to adopt this one instead?
Bob wanted a car, I figure. I’ll begrudge him a lot of things these days.
@scr…archivist #54
Sorry, had not looked at the “behind the scenes” video you linked to, with all that heart-felt patriotic tears…
And I over-interpreted the Chinatown shots of hijab-wearing girls. So it was an all-local affair.
Please excuse my globalized view.
Moggie @67
We did it specifically to annoy you, yes you, Moggie. Back in the 1930s, a bunch of us were sitting around thinking “what can we do to aggravate Moggie (who hasn’t been born yet)?” The answer became blinding obvious, we’d get Herbert Hoover to proclaim Francis Scott Key’s poem “The Star Spangled Banner” sung to the tune of “To Anacreon in Heaven” the national anthem.
No thanks are necessary. Just doing our part to foment discontent throughout the world.
Is it reasonable say that the Superb Owl is the biggest sporting event in the U.S.? Maybe for one event, but the baseball World Series is 4 to 7 games that attracts more viewers.
What happened to such patriotic things such as “E pluribus unum” ? Oh wait, it wasn’t in english, is that why it went away as the National Motto? (I know its not, silly Eisenhower).
Another thing I think Americans have forgotten is what is inscribed on the plaque inside lady liberty:
“Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!”
Says nothing about forcing them to speak English. The US was made on the backs of immigrants, and even our culture and language has been strongly influenced by them.
I don’t see the problem. Let the Reich-Wingers (oops, did I just invoke Godwin? Oh well) rant and rave about patriotism, but they’re only focused on the most recent definition of it, not what the US was founded upon. They’re free to be wrong.
Well sure, if you count each viewer of each game separately. If you could somehow count every person who watched at least one game only once, I doubt it would beat the Super Bowl.
@45 tkreference
Adult immigrants often have trouble picking up the new language. The old squash just loses its neuroplasticity after a while. But you can’t hardly stop the kids from learning it. My wife does the demographic data for a large public school system. The only question is how quickly they will gain fluency, not if. For Spanish speaking families the national pattern is that by the time the first generation children have their own households better than 75% speak English primarily at home.
The only real exceptions are the Hasidim and to a lesser extent the Amish who haveade failure to integrate a religious duty. For the formerm it requires an ‘education’ system that teaches no secular subjects and no English with strict rules against TV, radio, Internet access and unapproved books and magazines.
So much awesomeness!!!
Lots of national anthems are from drinking songs, Germany’s for instance.
<Mr. Burns>Excellent.</Mr. Burns>
Have you noticed how at the end they don’t even translate gracias? :-)
(…And that bit with dancing around the Coke can… that was a refreshing bit of honesty, LOL…)
See comments 32 and 64. Without FtBCon and the Americans I know on Facebook, I wouldn’t even have noticed that the Superbowl was last weekend.
The last native speaker of Wichita (I hope she’s still alive) interpreted for the second-to-last (her grandmother), who didn’t speak English.
Cú Chulainn is the Most Dangerous of the Heroes. That fits. That fits extremely well, actually.
That doesn’t prevent anyone from getting to the level of an early Schwarzenegger movie. The questions are time and money to sit down and learn with a teacher for an hour a day.
That does not at all mean that the remaining 25 % couldn’t speak English all the time.
Well yes. That’s sort of the point. The RWNJBS about immigrants never learning and not wanting to learn the local language is just that . The question is do you want kids literate and communicating at grade level? If so, spend a little on ESL. If you want them less quickly integrated and less productive you starve ESL and make cheap political points with the racists
@Scr…Archivist, 64:
I wonder how many of the 2 million viewers from outside North America were simply US military members overseas. I know I was forced to watch the damn thing, as every single TV at work was playing it. Wikipedia says the US military is approximately 1.5 million (w/ about 125K active overseas). Wouldn’t surprise me at all if the Super Bowl receives even fewer non-US viewers than they think.