Basically Absolut Vodka produces an ad just for the Mexico market (in English instead of Spanish, but whatever), showing the border of Mexico if the United States hadn't taken what Mexicans had rightfully taken from a bunch of native americans centuries earlier. Now I looked at it and had a small chuckle. But if you read some of the comments under the story you would have thought that Mexico and Absolut Vodka had just burned down an orphanage after raping everyone inside.
(Absolut Vodka also have a blog. Go and behold the joy and understanding this campaign is being greeted with.)
I read on another blog about how Absolut Vodka is blowing a chance here....that they should do marketing campaign based on the nationalist dreamings of other places. A campaign for Quebec with them taking over Labrador. An English campaign where they still owned the United States and most of the rest of the world. Or perhaps something for Mongolia.
Which sounds fun and all until you get someone suggesting one for Germany during World War II. That kind of takes the fun out of the campaign.
It's easy for me to mock Americans for freaking out over this utterly harmless ad. However, someone who does marketing with Absolut Vodka really does need a kick to the head. There's no such thing as launching an ad campaign in one country and no chance of it spilling into another. The days of Hollywood stars going to Japan and doing an ad for $3 million that no one will see outside the country are over, thanks to Youtube.
Under the best of circumstances an ad campaign that deals with boarder issues involving Mexico and the United States is not smart. But in an election year, where the sanity and a sense of humour for a lot of people is fragile, the company has had brighter ideas. This was completely predictable.
Last Five
1. Une annee sans lumiere - The Arcade Fire
2. Little earthquakes - Tori Amos*
3. Don't stop - The Rolling Stones
4. Life is beautiful - Ryan Adams
5. 19th nervous breakdown - The Rolling Stones
3 comments:
A campaign for Quebec with them taking over Labrador.
Or, as I've seen, maps of Newfoundland which include Saint-Pierre and Miquelon.
Or, perhaps, which fulfill The Independent's irredentist fantasy of seizing the Button Islands from Nunavut.
Heck, go whole-hog and reclaim the 1763 boundaries!
I'm waiting for the company to do an ad to make it up to the US...something like Absolut Manifest Destiny, with the US taking over Canada.
I wonder what the reaction would be like in Canada?
We could modestly retaliate with one that restores Alaska, Point Roberts, the NW Angle, and, why not, Maine, to Canada! Il Canada irridento!
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