food

Cheerios' Interracial Ad Pulls High Scores

by Karlene Lukovitz , June 7, 2013

Cheerios' new ad featuring a mixed-race couple and a biracial child drew a slew of racist comments on YouTube, causing General Mills to disable the comments feature.

The good news is that General Mills continues to run the spot, and that Americans as a whole give it high marks.

Ace Metrix reported that the 30-second version of "Good for Your Heart" (or "Just Checking," on YouTube) -- which shows a little girl pouring Cheerios all over her napping dad, after hearing that they're good for his heart -- now ranks #2 among all tracked cereal brand commercials for 2013 and #6 among 50 ads over the last twelve months. It scored well above average on likeability, attention and the other attributes that go into calculating Ace scores.

The 15-second version also excelled, coming in sixth for this year and 15th for the last twelve months.

Moreover, after filtering verbatim comments from its survey sample for those who specifically identified "the couple," Ace found that the majority did so in a positive way.

Two examples: "Interesting concept with the interracial couple, about time that happened on a commercial" and "I like the interracial couple. It shows the world in a more realistic light."

Ace's site offers more specifics on the spot's scoring performance and samples of comments.

african american, food, social media, tv, video, youtube

3 comments about "Cheerios' Interracial Ad Pulls High Scores".

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Christina Ricucci from Millenia 3 Communications, June 10, 2013 at 8:39 a.m.
Kudos to General Mills for continuing to run this spot. Even more than its simple realism and the fact that it's LONG overdue, it's just so darned cute! And bonus kudos for disabling the youtube comments. Please let's chase these hatemongerers back under a rock.
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Christina Ricucci from Millenia 3 Communications, June 10, 2013 at 9:23 a.m.

Oops, sorry, make that "hatemongers". My fingers are moving faster than my brain this morning.

Edmund Singleton from Winstion Communications, June 11, 2013 at 5:12 a.m.

When I first saw the commercial I just thought how cute, that was before the news of the YouTub comments hit my eyes.
On the subway the other day there was a kid who's nationality was unknown to anyone at a glance. We all looked up then went back to our tablets for more important concerns...