As far as marketing messages go, “We don’t care if you live or die” is kind of a, let’s call it, tricky one. (Sprite could have pulled it off back in the 1990s, maybe, but those people were maniacs.) Hence, presumably, news that Uber Eats has had to slightly dial down one of its big, expensive ad spots for this weekend’s big, expensive Super Bowl, after some consumers pointed out that making fun of someone with a peanut allergy for forgetfully eating peanut butter might rub certain people (i.e., survivors) the wrong way.
The scene is part of Uber Eats’ major ad buy, which was supposed to be making headlines for reuniting Jennifer Aniston and David Schwimmer in a cute bit about how she’s forgotten that they worked together for basically forever. (The whole theme of the campaign is “Whoops, people forgot to use our product!” which is a weirdly self-effacing concept for a company’s marketing department to try to float, but we digress.) The ad also features such light-hearted moments as Usher forgetting his half-time show, Victoria Beckham forgetting the Spice Girls, and, yeah, some random actor eating peanut butter because he forgot it contained the tiny legumes that could send him into potentially deadly anaphylactic shock.
Nickelodeon is getting ready to slime the Super Bowl
The ad (which was rolled out earlier this week, because our lives are now centered entirely on waiting for expensive commercials to come out ahead of the big sports game) quickly caught the ire of not-for-profit advocacy group Food Allergy Research & Education, which released a statement saying that “We’re incredibly disappointed by @UberEats’ use of life-threatening food allergies as humor in its Super Bowl ad. The suffering of 33M+ Americans with this condition is no joke. Life-threatening food allergy is a disease, not a diet. Enough is enough.” FARE has said that it’s talked with Uber, and that the scene in question has been removed from the ad.
This isn’t the first Super Bowl ad that’s had to be altered in the run-up to Da Big Ad Spot: Gambling company FanDuel also updated an ad featuring the late Carl Weathers in the wake of his death last week, in what’s sure to be the most touching and sensitive gambling advertisement you’re likely to see this year.