Coca-Cola

I watch the Super Bowl, but not particularly for the game. I don't really care for American football. I do enjoy watching athletic championships, though, so the Super Bowl usually catches my radar. But I really watch the game for the commercials between. The game is perfectly poised at the start of the year to establish the start of the advertising calendar. Super Bowl commercials are remembered for weeks, months, sometimes even years.

One of the commercials aired last night was for Coca-Cola. I almost always enjoy their advertisements, even if I don't actually like their original beverage. (Cherry Coke, on the other hand, is my poison of choice thanks to years of working in Dining Services with free access during shifts!) Anyway, this particularly ad was no exception. In case you missed it because you a) don't watch television, b) don't watch the Super Bowl, and/or c) don't follow trending topics in the media, here's a video of it:

This delightful sixty-second video has apparently brought out some of the worst in some of my fellow countrymen. Reports on the Internet of crude, racist, xenophobic, and/or prejudiced reactions make me want to weep. But other reports have shown how more people have come together in praise of this ad. Yes, it is intended to garner support of Coca-Cola and convince people to buy it, but there is more to it. It is the genius of the Coca-Cola marketing department. They have a long, beautiful tradition of equating their sugary carbonated beverage with being American. Of course, the ads from the 1920s were the typical white-bread America that some people seem to think it is still all that exists.

But as our nation more readily embraced diversity, Coca-Cola has always been right there along with it. Even though the print ads for the first fifty years or so were more of the same as above, I have long enjoyed this television spot from 1971:

As always, Coca-Cola tells us that their product is what it means to be happy, content, and at peace, with ourselves, our neighbours, with the world. If everyone had a Coke, everyone would be happy. After all, Coca-Cola is The Real Thing. (I have to admit, though, that I've never really understood what that phrase actually means. Maybe something to do with a return to the Original Recipe--minus the cocaine--after New Coke failed miserably?) In 1987, Coca-Cola released this commercial in time for the holidays. I wasn't old enough to be cognizant of it at the time but, thanks in large part to my parents recording "The Sound of Music" on NBC this year, the commercial was captured and viewed repeatedly in my household. (My sister Amanda loved the movie and watched it every single day for at least a year or two while her older brothers were all in school!)

With this brief history of just a few advertisements, are people really, seriously shocked that Coca-Cola would air a commercial that features people from all over the country, singing about our beautiful nation in the amazing diversity of tongues that are represented in our rich tapestry? I think that my friend Zoe Bouras captured it perfectly with this comment recently shared on Facebook:

I don't think I've seen a commercial to give Americans more to be proud of than the Coke commercial. It showed an America where it is safe to be different, an America of acceptance and unity, a real 'melting-pot'. I think that's something to be proud of.

I am proud to be an American because it means I come from a diverse land of diverse people of diverse opinions. I don't adhere to the belief in American exceptionalism and I know that my country has plenty of flaws, but I also know that most of the people are good, wonderful people who are trying to do the best they can to make the world a better place, even if just within their small spheres of influence.