Originally published at: https://boingboing.net/2018/02/05/mlk-on-car-ads.html
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8 Likes
Makes you wonder why they wanted him silenced.
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Let’s not forget that the MLK estate, who could have easily said no, probably took a big payday on this one.
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There’s only one appropriate reaction gif for that Superbowl ad:
[this is one of those cases where a controversial/trolling ad being discussed in the media after it airs will result in reduced sales and diminished brand goodwill.]
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The King Center and Bernice King DID say no.
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Some of those images didn’t really make sense. Is ultrasound the problem? Or old churches being moved?
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Too bad they aren’t the ones in charge.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intellectual_Properties_Management
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Yes. Your point? Dexter King runs the estate and said yes. The rest of the family did not sign off on it. There has been a split for years now over his intellectual property.
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I think that church was a climate refugee. Needed to be moved inland b/c too many gas guzzlers out there. Pretty ironic.
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April 4th this year, they’ll probably lose control of MLK’s image. (50 years since his death, under the copyright rules in effect then.)
The case focused on federal copyright law, a publicity statute in California and common law in New Jersey, the state where Einstein died and where he lived before that.
Hebrew University, home of the Albert Einstein Archives, argued the court should apply federal copyright law, which protects works for 70 years after copyright holders’ deaths. But that term was only extended from 50 to 70 years in 1998.
The university filed the lawsuit in California, where a state law gives a postmortem right of publicity to people’s beneficiaries for 70 years. But Matz said California law is irrelevant since Einstein did not live here.
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I visibly recoiled when this ad came on. I didn’t know anything about the ads for the Super Bowl this year, and the first year of America First is easily seen in these companies tripping over themselves to pander to that group was not pretty.
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and yet here you are, STILL totally falling for it.
I was watching and listening for the first few seconds until I saw the first truck, and immediately realized what it was. My knee jerk reaction at that point was to just close my eyes.
I had a bad reaction to Verizon’s First Responder commercial as well. Not because of what it was or what it was trying to do. Just that they felt they had to put their name and tag line on the end. Would have been much more impactful if they didn’t, and we learned later it was them.
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Of the Big 3, I hate Chrysler the most. Their ads are always dripping with jingoism when they’re not dripping with toxic masculinity.
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I watched without the sound on, which made it easier to imagine a jingle to match the appalling images: “Baseball, hot dogs, apple pie and MLK!”
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I’m not sure what the car maker thinks its doing, using MLK to market a truck that only appeals to the white racist demographic.
Actually it’s fine and appropriate to criticize this sort of thing. Ignoring it won’t make it go away, it’s been seen by 20 million people, and this comment’s particular form of cynical oneupmanship is meaningless.
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And yet so far, it seems to be making up the majority of this thread.
C’mon bbsers, give me more reason to still have faith in this place!
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I’m genuinely surprised there aren’t more TV commercials featuring Jesus shilling products these days. You wouldn’t even have to pay royalties to His estate.
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