Comedians David Roth and Yuriy Mikhalevskiy poke fun at the way advertising industry treats race and social issues in a self-funded commercial for Cheerios, which is not affiliated with the Cheerios marketing team.
The spot features a team meeting where two creative directors are asked to come up with ideas to help the Cheerios brand get back in the conversation in this post-COVID BLM Ukraine world. One of the creatives shares his idea of having a suburban mom in her kitchen being joined by her husband, who is Black. The two characters are shown singing a song about how they are an interracial couple in a Cheerios ad, which makes Rachel Maddow happy and Sean Hannity mad.
This idea doesn’t get the green light and several other ideas, such as having various other interracial couples, are brought to life because there are so many underrated groups they can highlight. Thus, an Aborigen Australian and a South American follow, then a man from Quebec and a woman from Hawaii, a woman from Spain and a man from New York, a woman born in Chad and a man whose father’s name is Chad, a woman from Beijing and a man who own a casino, a woman born near the Nile and a man who needs Operation Smile, a woman from Bahrain and a man in chronic pain, a woman half Thai and a man who can eat a whole pie.
Roth and Mihhalevskiy, who are also advertising creative directors, said they took inspiration for the ad from Walmart’s Juneteenth-flavored ice cream, Salesforce’s non-binary corportate mascot Astro, Kendall Jenner’s BLM Pepsi ad, as well as numerous other displays of inclusivity in meetings.
