Dodge Ram's Super Bowl ad painted a romantic portrait of American farmers, but did it irresponsibly avoid reality?
The car company's "God Made a Farmer" ad has been praised for its earnestness, but it has also been criticized for failing to feature many minorities. To counter that, the Latino rights group Cuéntame has released its own version of the ad, this one featuring minority farm workers.
Cuéntame founder Axel Caballero told HuffPost Live Wednesday that their version has already received over 500,000 views online, but still no response from Dodge.
"One of the problems we had was that this hard work and hard labor that's shown in the ad, is that really exlusive to the folks that that they pictured in the ad?" Caballero said. "That's not the reality that we see on the ground and so we wanted to make a point of that."
According to the Institute For Agriculture and Trade Policy, "people from racial and ethnic minorities represent 36.3 percent of the American population and only 7.75 percent of farmers." That said, the USDA reports that Mexican-born immigrants make up approximately 68 percent of all United States farm workers.
Caballero told HuffPost Live that he hopes Dodge and other brands look to their ad agencies to more accurately portray how America has changed.
"The minute the brands out there realize this, it's going to benefit them as well," he said.
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