Another coca-cola advertisement

While looking for this week’s student discovery I found a couple things and just published one but then thought this one might also be interesting. Its’ a coca-cola advertisement aired in Spain for Euro 2012. There’s a polish men, although not literally told we understand from the name and the look, who works as a construction worker and haven’t seen his family since 2006. Here comes the advertising you get a chance to go to Poland for football games, drink more and get more chances, so our guy drinks coca-cola and the Spanish people around passes him their coca-cola bottles in a way give their chances to him. Although no single thing negative about the images of either the migrant or the host, there were some reactions to the commercial. Below I’ll share a couple of them which I’ve get from here. 

Pablo, Seville, 25 

‘The only thing the advert does is tell a story. It’s removed from the nationality of the main character. You could accuse the whole thing of digging deeper into more distorted ideas about Eastern Europe, but the main character is shown in a positive light and fights against that cliché in some way. To be honest the prejudices that exist in Spanish society against migrants from countries like Poland or Romania bother me more. I am a bit tired of the hypersensitivity of certain thematics but I can understand if this annoyed Polish people. It could have been the same thing if the clip was about a Spaniard in Germany. Actually, the most interesting thing about the advert actually is that someone found a job in Spain - in the construction sector!’

Aleksandra, Wroclaw, 26

‘It could have been worse. I don’t know anything about Poles in Spain, so maybe they would be like this construction worker, who is also a loving father and a person who has a random habit of keeping his shoes outside, on the balcony. More seriously, the only damage that this publicity may do to the image of Poles is that people will take Jacek for an average Pole in general. But I guess that would be silly, wouldn’t it? Let’s move on, go to Poland for euro 2012, and get our own opinions.’

Marysia, Warsaw, 26

‘It’s nice that with all the negative PR that Poland seems to get, like Poles coming and ‘stealing’ work (I would have mentioned the plumber and the nurse, but it’s boring), catching and eating swans in the UK (according to the Daily Mail that’s what we eat) or all the opinions on Polish racism and bad behaviour in the stadiums, that what has emerged recently is a positive image of Poles - never mind that this is a soft drink commercial used to sell more drinks.’