Current Events > MLK ad for Dodge trucks is swiftly criticized

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https://www.nytimes.com/2018/02/05/business/media/mlk-commercial-ram-dodge.html?mtrref=t.co

The online blowback was swift for Ram on Sunday after the carmaker used a sermon given by the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. as the voice-over for a Super Bowl ad.

The general sentiment: Did the company really just use Dr. Kings words about the value of service to sell trucks?

The commercial showed scenes of people helping others while Dr. King extolled the virtues of service. At the end, the phrase Built to Serve was shown on the screen, along with the Ram logo.

MLK wanted equal rights and for me to buy a Dodge Ram, one Twitter user wrote. Another wrote: Black people cant kneel and play football but MLK should be used to sell trucks during the super bowl. Unbelievable.

The response put Ram in a position that advertisers dread misfiring with a commercial in the Super Bowl, which sells 30 seconds of airtime for upward of $5 million and is watched by more than 100 million people.

Its the wrong mistake to make given everything thats going on in the U.S. right now, said Tim Calkins, a marketing professor at Northwestern Universitys Kellogg School of Management. Theres so much emotion right now around race in this country that this was a high-risk move, and clearly its not going over very well.

The ad came after a tumultuous year for the N.F.L., which had a national spotlight placed on football players who sat or kneeled during the national anthem, a controversial gesture meant to draw attention to racial oppression and police brutality against black Americans. President Trump sharply criticized the players, which heightened some of the rhetoric surrounding the protests.

And while many advertisers release their ads before the game, Ram did not, which added to the social media maelstrom.

I think it was well intentioned, but theyre going to have a lot of explaining to do, Mr. Calkins said. They did not release this ahead of time, so they went for the surprise. They got that, but at the same time, they now have a big problem with feedback and people being upset.

Adding to the disconnect, the sermon in question, delivered exactly 50 years ago, touched on the danger of overspending on items like cars and discussed why people are so often taken by advertisers. That was not lost on the ads detractors.

The King Center said on Twitter that neither the organization nor the Rev. Bernice King, one of Dr. Kings daughters, is responsible for approving his words or imagery for use in merchandise, entertainment (movies, music, artwork, etc) or advertisement. It said that included the Super Bowl commercial.

Ram approached Dr. Kings estate about using his voice in the commercial, said Eric D. Tidwell, the managing director of Intellectual Properties Management, the licenser of the estate.

Once the final creative was presented for approval, it was reviewed to ensure it met our standard integrity clearances, Mr. Tidwell said in a statement. We found that the overall message of the ad embodied Dr. Kings philosophy that true greatness is achieved by serving others.

Fiat Chrysler Automobiles U.S., which owns Ram, said in a statement that it was honored to work with the group to celebrate Dr. Kings words about the value of service.

We worked closely with the representatives of the Martin Luther King Jr. estate to receive the necessary approvals, and estate representatives were a very important part of the creative process every step of the way, the company said.

Here is the ad footage with a different segment of the same exact speech, in which MLK specifically criticizes car advertisements.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l_v1h6Zoi-Q&feature=youtu.be
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the hyundai one was worse imo
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Romulox28 posted...

the hyundai one was worse imo

That's a very tough call. Just real MVPs in the shitty ad department.
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This is why it pays to have people of color help you with these things. Cringed the second I saw it.

How out of touch do you have to be to think using MLK to sell TRUCKS is gonna go over well?
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what were they even thinking
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this year's ads were pretty awful all around
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How did no one think that this was a bad idea?
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FrisbeeDude posted...

This is why it pays to have people of color help you with these things.

foreveraIone posted...

what were they even thinking

This, seriously. Extremely tone deaf advertising
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I liked that JEEP made an ad about how other companies have false promises in their manifestos

and that JEEP's manifesto is real

cue them showing a car running all over nature
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FrisbeeDude posted...

This is why it pays to have people of color help you with these things. Cringed the second I saw it.

How out of touch do you have to be to think using MLK to sell TRUCKS is gonna go over well?

Maybe next year NASCAR will try the same tactic
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Were they just like "**** it, it's February, let's try to appeal to people getting their Black History Month bonuses".
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ProtoManSPx posted...

FrisbeeDude posted...

This is why it pays to have people of color help you with these things.

How do you know the racial make up of the ad team? Do you have any evidence, or is this just some racist assumption you're spewing out again to fit your victim narrative?
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The Admiral posted...

ProtoManSPx posted...

FrisbeeDude posted...

This is why it pays to have people of color help you with these things.

How do you know the racial make up of the ad team? Do you have any evidence, or is this just some racist assumption you're spewing out again to fit your victim narrative?

You're cute
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Whoever came up with the commercial was either incredibly oblivious or one of the best trolls of this decade. Actually pretty funny to think about, either way. Lol
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that T-Mobile baby ad was worse

If it had just been some political campaign ad, it would've been whatever

but T-MOBILE OUT OF NOWHERE
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Obviously they were trying to tie it in with BHM, but holy fuck this was a stupid thing to do
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I'm reminded of this piece I read a while back:

https://www.jacobinmag.com/2017/01/restoring-king/

Finally, in perhaps the most American of twists, we have the commodified King efforts in the last decade, largely spearheaded by the King family itself to market the words and image of the Reverend King. In classic American fashion, Martin Luther King Jr has become a consumer good.

Kings family has engaged in an aggressive effort to market the image of the Reverend King, including a multi-million dollar deal with Time Warner for the rights to Kings speeches, writings, and recordings. The King family sued to prevent companies from using Kings image on refrigerator magnets, switchblades, and on I have a Dream ice cream cones.

But they quickly turned to their own business in King kitsch. In the mid 1990s, the Reverend Kings son Dexter King, who administered the King estate, took a pilgrimage to visit the shrine of another King THE KING, Elvis at Graceland in Memphis, TN, to pick up some marketing lessons. Since the mid 1990s, Kings estate has authorized, among other things, commemorative pins for the Atlanta Summer Olympics with the likeness of Martin Luther King Jr, porcelain statuettes of King, and, my favorite, checkbooks bearing Kings likeness.

Whether commodity or conservative icon, suffice it to say that each of these visions of King is flawed. The commemorative King celebrates heroism and courage, but risks the creation of a one-dimensional character that glosses over Kings subversive, challenging, and upsetting messages. The therapeutic King stands in sharp contrast to a political strategy that demanded the overthrow of American apartheid and demanded great sacrifices from blacks and whites alike.

The conservative King is based on a very selective appropriation of Kings words largely from a single speech in service of a cause that King found abhorrent. And the commodified King creates comforting images that are wholly drained of their ability to provoke and challenge and, moreover, stand in sharp juxtaposition to Kings penetrating critique of American capitalism and his deep-rooted anti-materialism.

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It says right there in the article that they worked closely with the people that control Kings estate. No problems here.
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FrisbeeDude posted...

The Admiral posted...

ProtoManSPx posted...

FrisbeeDude posted...

This is why it pays to have people of color help you with these things.

How do you know the racial make up of the ad team? Do you have any evidence, or is this just some racist assumption you're spewing out again to fit your victim narrative?

You're cute

So you got nothing, right?
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fan357 posted...

It says right there in the article that they worked closely with the people that control Kings estate. No problems here.

You think MLK would've been ok with his speech being used to sell trucks?
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Those managing King's estate are just as much to blame here as Dodge.
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FrisbeeDude posted...

fan357 posted...

It says right there in the article that they worked closely with the people that control Kings estate. No problems here.

You think MLK would've been ok with his speech being used to sell trucks?

The new Rams are badass so probably. Also Ram isn't a part of Dodge anymore. Ram is Ram. Though they are both part of FCA.
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Is this worse than the Kendall Jenner's Pepsi ad?
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Ram trucks are compensating for something. I've seen more ads from them than from Chevy and Ford. Then again they have the oldest platform of the three American truck brands.
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Antifar posted...

Those managing King's estate are just as much to blame here as Dodge.

This is also true
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Lol

T-Mobile has to get the award for the worst pandering, though
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Rightfully so.
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fenderbender321 posted...

Getting upset over stupid shit like this is everything I hate about modern society. What a bunch of pussies we've become. We should be working toward getting stronger as individuals.

Yeah. Now the news is less about things that happened and more about that insensitive thing somebody said either on or offline.

s0nicfan posted...

T-Mobile has to get the award for the worst pandering, though

I'm not even sure it was pandering
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Bullet_Wing posted...

Don Draper never would have signed off on this. Damnit Campbell!

An interesting characterisation with Pete Campbell is that he is surprisingly down with the kids. He often makes predictions/calls totally at odds with the older heads that actually work out very well. A prominent example is him predicting Ali to beat Foreman.

So imo he would have thought this was dumb.
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Lou makes a goddamn comic strip with a dog named Martin Ruffer King as the main character smdh!!
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yet here we are talking about it...... why do folk fall for the same shit every month?

last month it was something about a monkey shirt or something?
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hollow_shrine posted...

Is this worse than the Kendall Jenner's Pepsi ad?

Yes
fenderbender321 posted...

Getting upset over stupid shit like this is everything I hate about modern society. What a bunch of pussies we've become. We should be working toward getting stronger as individuals.

There was never a time where people didn't have opinions about shit like this so I have no idea what you're talking about
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Essentially all of the humanitarian ads were awful except for Stella, and that's only because they've been promoting clean water partnerships for years now and didn't try to overly emotionalize that stuff.

They all got destroyed by Tide, though.
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Note to self: if I ever become an iconic American figure, tell my estate and children to never sell me out to sell something dumb when I'm dead or else I will haunt them!!!!!
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wackyteen posted...

that T-Mobile baby ad was worse

If it had just been some political campaign ad, it would've been whatever

but T-MOBILE OUT OF NOWHERE

This

also it was weird using all apologies by nirvana
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shit like this makes me wonder who owns MLK's intellectual properties?
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