Absolut Vodka decided to “turn hate into love” with the perfect response to Westboro Baptist Church on National Vodka Day.
When the hate group tweeted at the Swedish vodka brand with images saying “God hates Pride” and “God hates drunks,” Absolut Vodka responded by unveiling their clever project supporting and celebrating the queer community who the Westboro Baptist Church love to attack with their notorious “God hates fags” slogan.
— Absolut (@absolutvodka) October 5, 2018
Absolut revealed that they had been attending rallies from hate groups just like the Westboro Baptist Church in a clever attempt to take their messages of racism, sexism, homophobia and hate into a message of support and love.
The booze brand decided to attend these events and gather as many posters as they could. They attended rallies all over the world in countries like Australia, Germany, Bulgaria, The US and the UK.
They then extracted ink from posters with messages that spread hate and fear, and used that exact ink to “spread a better message.” They used the ink for their limited edition bottle which has “love” written on it in 16 languages.
Craig Johnson, Global VP of Marketing at Absolut told Pink News, “Absolut and other brands have often talked a lot about these issues—we wanted to turn it into our product.”
If they chose to use our brand in a hateful way, we wanted to be forthright and not let their usurpation of our bottle go. It was the perfect opportunity to show how we can turn hate into love,” said Johnson. “It was the perfect opportunity to show how we can turn hate into love.”
Absolut managed to extract around 60 millimetres of ink while attending rallies between 2017 and 2018, resulting in the ink being used on three million of the limited edition bottles, known as Absolut Drop.
Johnson explained:
“We believe brands have a role to play in the current social discourse. Absolut has always stood for inclusivity. We’re not going to negatively comment on other people, other groups and their beliefs, but we are certainly going to talk about our values and our beliefs.”
The Westboro Baptist Church has always been known for spreading their messages of hate and fear towards minority groups, and have been described by the Southern Poverty Law Center, which monitors hate groups in the US, as “arguably the most obnoxious and rabid hate group”.
© 2018 GCN (Gay Community News). All rights reserved.
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