On Sunday night, car manufacture Dodge sparked a might backlash on social media for a tone-deaf Super Bowl ad that used excerpts of a speech by Civil Rights icon Martin Luther King, Jr. By Monday morning, someone recut the ad, wielding King's words against the car-making giant.
Dodge's ad used excerpts of King's famous "Drum Major Instinct" speech, given just two months before his assassination, and it backfired. Badly.
But one savvy internet user realized that the speech also had some coarse words from King for advertisers and so, to make perhaps the most firm point possible how off-the-mark the ad was, recut the original version of the Dodge using those excerpts, like the one below.
Now the presence of this instinct explains why we are so often taken by advertisers. You know, those gentlemen of massive verbal persuasion. And 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 neighbors envious, you must drive this type of car.
A more powerful message than the original ad could ever hope to make.
