About That “Other” RAM Super Bowl Commercial With Dr. Martin Luther King… (UPDATED)

The “Viking” spot wasn’t the only commercial RAM Trucked aired last night. The commercial you see above is called “Built To Serve” and features a quoted passage from Dr. Martin Luther King.

At first, I really liked this commercial and I even said as much on twitter, though I’ve since deleted the tweet and had a change of heart.

Why? Well, after paying a visit to twitter after the game I saw that commercial was getting a lot of negative feedback.

Many were put off by using Dr. King’s words to “sell trucks”. After thinking about it, I started to agree with that sentiment.

Then I saw that Dr. King’s estate had no input and did not approve of the commercial either and that is what sealed it for me.

UPDATE: The information that Dr. King’s estate had no input and did not approve of the commercial is incorrect.  Dr. King’s estate was involved in the creative process and did approve the use of his passage.  In light of this information my opinion has changed more towards the positive but I will leave the story as it was first posted below for posterity. 

I realized that my initial positive reaction to the commercial was based more off of Dr. King’s words which kind of made me forget that this company was commercializing them to sell product.

As a marketing major I should have known better than to not see the angles of this before posting my reaction but we all make mistakes.

Though, unlike some, I’m not angry at RAM for the commercial. It wasn’t a good move but I think they had good intentions. Anyway those are my two cents on it.

You can watch the commercial for yourself below.  Afterwards, let us know what you think about it.

Do you agree that it was a bad move for RAM to use Dr. King’s message in their commercial?  Or do you think that I (and others) are maybe over reacting?

Let us know your opinion in the comments below or on twitter at @MotorworldHype.

If you want to see the RAM commercial I did like, then check out our previous post where I pick my top 3 favorite Super Bowl LII car commercials.

RAM “Built To Serve” Super Bowl LII commercial

 

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