MLK Totally Wants You to Drive a Dodge Ram
On February the 4th, 50 years ago, Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. gave his “Drum Major instinct” sermon. A sermon about how if one wants to be “important”, “recognized”, and “great”, then one must recognize that the “greatest among you shall be your servant.” (source).
Dodge Ram’s motto is, “Built to serve.” Rev. Martin Luther King’s “Drum Major instinct” sermon partly talks about being a servant and how one can become great by serving. Put two and two together and the people behind this commercial probably thought they had made a goosebump-inducing and awe-inspiring masterpiece. Well, they were very, very wrong.
People across the world were fuming, repulsed, and put off. And they had every right to be.
Ironically enough, in the first half of the exact same sermon, MLK warns people about the dangers of commercialism, capitalism, and consumerism. He says the “drum major instinct” we all have is exactly what makes us so drawn towards advertisers and the products they’re selling.
“…those gentlemen of massive verbal persuasion…they have a way of saying things to you that kind of gets you into buying. In order to be a man of distinction, you must drink this whiskey. In order to make your neighbours envious, you must drive this type of car. In order to be lovely to love you must wear this kind of lipstick or this kind of perfume. And you know, before you know it, you’re just buying that stuff. That’s the way the advertisers do it.” (source)
MLK continues on to say this “drum major instinct” that we all have, “often causes us to live above our means”. He then uses the example of people buying cars they can’t afford, cars that are way over their salary — all of this because we want to be better than everyone else, to feed our ego and brag about the luxurious things we have.
Once you get the chance to read MLK’s full sermon, one can see why everyone is harshly criticizing Dodge Ram and dragging them to the ground. MLK’s sermon warns people about the dangers of their strong want to be recognized and better than everyone else — how it could lead us to buying unnecessary items or overpriced products that we really can’t afford, such as a Dodge Ram truck. People have pulled out their pitchforks because the car brand twisted the words of a great man who fought for equality. They used his words warning about the temptations of advertisers to sell a product.
Did the people behind this do this on purpose? One can only wonder about what happened in the planning and execution of this expensive Super Bowl ad. Did they not realize they were using MLK’s words for the exact thing he warned about? Could they not have foreseen the massive backlash they would get once this commercial was seen by millions?
There’s a saying that there’s no such thing as bad publicity, that no press is bad press. When everyone is criticizing something, when there’s backlash for someone doing something so absurdly wrong, people become more curious about the situation — they want to know what it is that is so bad about this one Dodge Ram commercial. What did they say? What did they do? Soon enough, everyone is talking about it. It’s like that one piece of juicy gossip in high school floating around about how Susan stole Helen’s boyfriend as revenge for that one thing that happened during 7 seconds in Heaven at that house party— that one piece of gossip those high school kids just can’t stop talking about because it’s so damn scandalous. Perhaps this is the exact same situation and it was all planned beforehand.
There’s no way the people behind such an expensive Super Bowl commercial could have overlooked the true meaning of the sermon. There is no way. But then again, would they truly want to risk their reputation and sales taking a massive hit over an expensive 1 minute commercial just for extra publicity? It’s hard to say whether this was a crafty plan come to fruition or a huge screw-up due to horrible planning. I personally think it was a major mistake, not a horrible and distasteful marketing plan, but one can only truly wonder.
All I know is that this is how the commercial truly should have went:
