Back in March, Nabisco’s Honey Maid graham cracker brand decided to celebrate love and family in all its various forms with an ad entitled “This is Wholesome.” The tagline was “everyday wholesome snacks for every wholesome family,” and the 30-second spot featured couples and families from all walks of life–including an interracial family and gasp, a gay couple.
Outrage ensued. Not from everyone, of course, but from the type of people who are usually outraged by this sort of thing. You know, bigots. It was as predictable as the uncovering of an anti-gay Republican’s gay sex scandal. Like clockwork, the comments started pouring in on YouTube and “family values” blogs across the country.
Professional outrage machine One Million Moms joined various other outraged groups to protest the ads. They urged Nabisco to “pull this liberal commercial immediately and remain neutral in the culture war.” Grrr, love and family. Simply disgusting.
“We recognize change is happening every day, from the way in which a family looks today to how a family interacts to the way it is portrayed in media,” said Gary Osifchin, senior marketing director for Honey Maid parent company Mondelez, at the time of the initial backlash. “We at Honey Maid continue to evolve and expand our varieties to provide delicious, wholesome products so they can be a part of everyday moments of connection in a world with changing, evolving family dynamics.”
From that statement, it was clear that Honey Maid and their parent company were going to stand by their ad. But now, they’ve decided to give a nice, large, slightly curved middle finger to all the haters. It comes in the form of a new ad, entitled “Love”:
Yep, looks like they printed out all of those negative YouTube comments and turned them into an art installation of the word “love,” thus rendering them completely inert. Honey Maid DGAF.
We made a commercial about what makes families, family. And we received a lot of comments. See what we did with them http://t.co/zEbBnTrNDA
— Honey Maid (@HoneyMaidSnacks) April 3, 2014
Yes, I am aware that all of this, in the end, is about selling graham crackers and these are, at their basic form, advertisements. But you do have a company with a bottom line holding firm to their message, and in our culture of bullshit outrage and even bullshittier instant apologies, the importance of having a backbone should never be under-emphasized.
Image via YouTube