The King Center, an Atlanta-based memorial to King founded by his widow, Coretta Scott King, said on Twitter after the commercial aired that it is not the entity responsible for approving King’s words or imagery for entertainment or advertising purposes.
Ram took a risk with the ad, first by featuring a revered figure and second by wading into the complicated issue of race, albeit indirectly, according to Timothy Calkins, a marketing professor at Northwestern University’s Kellogg School of Management who created the Kellogg Super Bowl Advertising Review in 2005.
He said Ram compounded the gamble by choosing not to release its Super Bowl spot early for a test run like many companies do.
“When you do that, you protect the surprise, but increase the risk,” Calkins said in a Feb. 7 phone interview. “This is one that if they had released it ahead of time, they would have known it was a problem, and they never would have run it.”
At first look, the spot is a “powerful, emotional, brand-building piece of creative, but at second look viewers start to wonder, 'Is that really OK?'” Calkins said.
“I suppose a lot of people would look at that ad and say it was fine, and clearly the people who put it together would say it was fine,” he said. “That’s the not the question. The question is: 'Will it strike a nerve?' And this did.”
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