Kraft Thinks Being Mixed Equals Misery

I have to admit, I don’t really know what I think about these commercials. Part of me is undeniably offended by the spots about this new Kraft food, MilkBite Bars, which are sold as a mix of milk and granola. Part of me says, hey, it’s just a commercial. But the problem is that the geniuses behind the campaign, and there are several commercials, decided that the best way to sell the product was to create a character that is miserable because he is mixed with the two things.

Huh?

Why does he have to be miserable being mixed? Why can’t he have been more positive, reveling in the fact that he is both, making a great new taste sensation. Seems rather strange to me to sell a product with an unhappy, tragic character.

And it sure feeds into the stereotype of the tragic mixed person, lost between two cultures. I know this is only a food item, but I can’t help but wish Kraft had made a better choice, one that showed their mixed food item positively, not negatively. What is clear from the series of spots, which are below, is that clearly someone in the ad company is definitely using the idea of mixed people as the basis for the character. And clearly that person or persons feel mixed must mean confused.

Get with it Kraft. Here’s to these ads dying a quick death. The product may be great. The commercials suck and are insulting.

Dentyne Shows Some Guts With This One

Way to go Dentyne. This took guts.

Man I’m loving the guts of the Dentyne people to put out a commercial like the one they did for Dentyne Pure. If you haven’t seen the spot it starts out featuring an African-American guy in full lip lock with what appears to be a White woman (though it is possible she is a light-skinned Black or Hispanic woman. But I don’t think so).

OMG!

That took some guts from them. While I’ve seen commercials before that show inter-ethnic relationships, very very few are as in your face as this one. I love it! And as I suspected when I first saw it, when I looked around the Internet to see reactions, the racists are up in arms with some very ugly comments about the spot and what they see as propaganda in favor of “race-mixing.”

Get over it people. I hope we see more companies with the guts to show this kind of spot. It’s a beautiful thing. Catches you off guard at first because we’re so unused to seeing it straight up like that, but then you see it for what it is, an ad that simply shows what’s going on for more and more people out there.

I gottta go get me some Dentyne Pure to show my support.

Here is the ad.