Dive Brief:
- General Mills has created an ad campaign in Canada that features non-traditional families telling their stories, as the brand looks to link itself with ideas of diversity and inclusion.
- The ads, which feature Canadian families, are aimed at consumers in that country, not in the United States.
- Among the videos in the new campaign is one featuring a story of two gay men adopting their daughter. Another features the story of an able-bodied woman who falls in love with a wheelchair-bound man after hearing his music.
Dive Insight:
The original "Love" ad from Cheerios featuring an interracial couple and their child sparked both admiration and debate -- General Mills had to be ban comments on YouTube to stop the flow of racist backlash.
But General Mills opted to release a second ad featuring that same interracial family and to air it during the Super Bowl last year. In the days before that ad, when it was unclear how General Mills would react to the controversy over the first ad, some predicted that the new Cheerios ad would feature a same-sex couple with children.
Now, such an ad is here ... just not in the U.S.