This ad’s fast-and-loose approach to protest imagery-going beyond the vague hippie costuming of the old Coke ad to turn real moments of high tension into an opportunity to celebrate commerce and fame-sounds a discordant note.
This is a particularly tense and stressful moment during which many casual media consumers have become, to one degree or another, much more careful in parsing and understanding images. That’s to say nothing of the fact that the recent incidents in which protesters have faced down police have been black people without famous names (like Baton Rouge protester Ieshia Evans) taking real risks, not white supermodels dispensing cola. In any climate, an ad that seems to explicitly reference both black anti-police-violence protesters and Vietnam War protesters, all to sell soft drinks, would be misguided.
And yet whatever its intentions, this ad is a glaring misstep.