Saturday, January 8, 2011

Doritos and Pepsi: "In Remembrance of Me"

Warning: The following video may be extremely tasteless to people of faith.



This ad, prepared by Media Wave Productions, a Philadelphia firm, for Pepsi's Doritos Crash the Super Bowl ad contest, shows a priest with a stack of bills on his desk, lamenting poor attendance at his church. He prays for guidance and he takes the sounds of soda and chips as a "sign". The church begins offering Pepsi and Doritos for communion, instead of a wafer and wine, and people line up around the block to attend. Problem solved.

The ad is crass and tacky, and yet may contain a small, unintended element of truth. Those of us old enough (or still able) to remember the sixties, may well remember during the height of the popularity of the Beatles, John Lennon proclaimed that they were "more popular than Jesus". And they were. Jesus couldn't draw the size of crowds the Beatles were drawing, at least, not in one place.

But, "popularity" isn't everything. And the reality is, that if you put up a sign saying "Free food", you're more likely to have a line out the door than you would advertising "Free sermons". Still, Pepsi was correct to take this entry out of the running for a Super Bowl spot. Whether or not it is intentional, it shows great disrespect to the religious faith of many people and appears to profane that which many consider holy.

But, just in case you got wind of what the hullabaloo was all about, that's it.

Ad playing Doritos for Eucharist yanked from Super Bowl contest

H/T Memeorandum

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