Creativity or dirty commercialism? Absolut Vodka cashes in on anti-president protest

An image of the candlelit rally held in Gwanghwamun Square, downtown Seoul, is visualized as the shape of an Absolut Vodka bottle in this advertisement. / Courtesy of Absolut Vodka Korea Facebook page

By Park Jae-hyuk

The new advertisement of Absolut Vodka, which depicted an image of a candlelit rally as the shape of a vodka bottle, has caused controversy among Korean customers.

The world-famous vodka brand owned by Pernod Ricard has disclosed the new Korean version of an advertisement on its official Facebook page, Saturday.

Its copy wrote, “THE FUTURE IS YOURS TO CREATE” on top and “ENJOY RESPONSIBLY” at the bottom, with an aerial view picture of candlelit rally participants marching through Gwanghwamun Square, downtown Seoul.

Absolut Vodka has made advertisements visualizing the shape of the vodka bottle, especially adopting images that represent a certain city or a country.

For example, the Boston version visualized tea boxes floating on the sea, symbolizing the Boston Tea Party in 18th century. The vodka producer adopted a picture of the Parthenon for Athens and yellow cabs for New York.

When it made a previous Seoul version, Absolut Vodka adopted an image of Korea’s traditional kite with a bottle-shaped hole in the middle.

However, the recent version of the alcoholic beverage advertisement has not been acceptable for some Koreans, as the candlelit rally is not a merely joyful event for them.

Some consumers expressed their displeasure toward the advertisement and vowed to boycott the company’s beverages.

They pointed out that bereaved families of Sewol ferry disaster are in sorrow at Gwanghwamun Square and Koreans protest is still ongoing.

Some of them claimed that the company should take any measure to support the rally, if it really wants to commercialize the event.

Other consumers, on the other hand, positively responded to the advertisement, saying it promoted Korea’s democracy and mature civic awareness to the world.

“I don’t know why people are annoyed with the advertisement. When other companies parodied or used keywords of the scandal, many customers supported their efforts,” an office worker surnamed Kim said.

Unlike Absolut Vodka, customers had backed Daiso’s candlelit rally packages and Gmarket’s parodying President Park Geun-hye and her longtime confidant Choi Soon-sil, during the previous rallies.