The maker of Cheerios cereal, General Mills, is standing by a new Cheerios commercial with an interracial cast portraying a family, which has unexpectedly generated vituperative comments online and in social media. The ad will “absolutely not” be withdrawn, Meredith Tutterow, associate marketing director for Cheerios and Multigrain Cheerios at General Mills in Golden Valley, Minn., said in a telephone interview on Friday afternoon. “There are many kinds of families,” Ms. Tutterow said, “and Cheerios just wants to celebrate them all.” The ad will “absolutely not” be withdrawn, Meredith Tutterow, associate marketing director for Cheerios and Multigrain Cheerios at General Mills in Golden Valley, Minn., said in a telephone interview on Friday afternoon.
“There are many kinds of families,” Ms. Tutterow said, “and Cheerios just wants to celebrate them all.”
The commercial, part of an ongoing advertising campaign for Cheerios, began on national television on Monday and was uploaded to YouTube on Wednesday. The spot depicts a daughter of a white mother and a black father asking her mother if Cheerios is indeed “good for your heart.” Her mother assures her that is so.
The reason the daughter asked, as viewers see, is that the child covered her father, who was sleeping on the sofa, with Cheerios, with most of them placed atop the side of his chest where his heart is.
The commercial ends with the word “Smile” on screen and a single Cheerio next to it, acting as a period.
The mere casting of an interracial family, however, has been enough to attract angry comments, many of them overtly racist. The volume of negative remarks on YouTube reached the point that General Mills disabled the commenting function.
On the approval/disapproval counter accompanying the video, which continues to register likes and dislikes, there were more than 700 “thumbs down” as of Friday afternoon, compared with more than 4,600 “thumbs up.”
As that ratio suggests, the preponderance of comments online and in social media about the commercial were positive. For instance, every remark visible on Friday afternoon on the Cheerios fan page on Facebook was a rave or praise.
“We’re getting such a positive response, we’re really gratified,” Ms. Tutterow said.
But the fact there were so many negative remarks — including language that was racist — has attracted widespread attention. For example, the AdFreak blog that is part of Adweek.com ran a post under the headline “It’s 2013, and People Are Still Getting Worked Up About Interracial Couples in Ads.”
“At what point will an ad like this just seem normal?” asked the author of the post, Tim Nudd.
A post on Gawker.com carried the blunt headline “Cheerios Ads Starring Interracial Family Predictably Stirs Bigot Wave.”
And The Root, a Web site that is directed toward an African-American audience, observed on its site, “Cheerios Ad Brings Out All the Racists.”
Ms. Tutterow said she was not taken aback by the amount of negative reactions or their tone.
“Cheerios is a family brand, and it’s true not all the comments were family friendly,” she said, but “Cheerios is a big brand” and General Mills always hears from consumers, pro and con, about its ads.
However, “we’re a bit surprised it’s turned into a story,” she added, particularly when “there are multicultural families everywhere,” in movies, on television and in advertising.
The interracial family cast may be the first for a Cheerios commercial, Ms. Tutterow said, adding that she was “not sure of the full history” of casting for the brand’s ads.
But it is certainly not the first television commercial for a major consumer brand to depict an interracial family. Many retailers, soft drinks, beers and other packaged foods have run such spots.
There was speculation that the presence of an interracial family in an ad for a brand as familiar and ubiquitous as Cheerios may have generated the attention, or perhaps it was the appearance of the debate over the commercial on the front page of the popular social-news site Reddit.
General Mills reacted quickly to the negative comments as they began arriving in midweek. After a Twitter user, @somecody, wrote on Wednesday about the “horrible, racist comments” that accompanied the commercial on YouTube, a reply was sent from the official Cheerios Twitter feed that thanked him “for the heads up,” adding, “They’ve since been removed.” Subsequent positive remarks about the spot also received thank you replies.
“We chose to disable” the commenting function “for a while,” Ms. Tutterow said, “and we’ll turn it back on at some point.”
The commercial was produced by the advertising agency that handles the creative account for Cheerios and other Big G cereals, Saatchi & Saatchi in New York, part of the Publicis Groupe.
Lynne Collins, a spokeswoman at the agency, referred questions about the negative reactions to General Mills. She described the family in the commercial as “a reflection of American society,” adding, “It is important for us to make sure the work reflects the people we’re trying to sell products to.”
