Dutch brewer Heineken acknowledged it “missed the mark” with a new commercial that Chance the Rapper criticized as “terribly racist,” and pulled the spot from TV and YouTube.
The Heineken Light ad shows a bartender sliding a bottle along a bar, past multiple black people, to a fair-skinned woman as the tagline, “Sometimes, lighter is better,” flashes onto the screen.
“While we feel the ad is referencing our Heineken Light beer, we missed the mark, are taking the feedback to heart and will use this to influence future campaigns,” a Heineken spokesperson told Newsweek, touting the company’s history of diverse marketing. The ad has been pulled from television and YouTube, reports NBC News.
Chance the Rapper on Sunday called attention to the ad.
“I think some companies are purposely putting out noticeably racist ads so they can get more views,” Chance tweeted.
The Chicago musician said he wasn’t calling for a boycott of the beer, but was “just noticing how often it happens.”
Chance said on Twitter Monday that he wanted to point out that many marketers “willfully” create racist advertising “so we overreact and tweet about it, and you write an article and tweet, and we all say their brand name 50 times.”
Actress Gabrielle Union also chimed in:
Last year, Heineken conducted a social experiment to determine whether people with opposing political views could find common ground. The resulting video, which the company said wasn’t staged, formed part of the brewer’s “Worlds Apart” advertising campaign in the United Kingdom, below:
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