The Hungarian Government fines Coca-Cola with € 1500 for showing same-sex couples in their advertising spots
GAYLES.TV.- Around the celebration of the Pride of Budapest in this 2019, Coca-Cola launched an advertising campaign that featured people of the same sex consuming the soda. With this gesture and under the motto "Zero sugar, zero prejudice", the company showed its support for the LGTBI collective in Hungary.
But the reaction of the Hungarian Government chaired by the far-rightist Viktor Orbán, who by the way shares political space with VOX in the European ParliamentIt was furious. Taking advantage of the Advertising Law, the advertiser was fined with a sanction of 500.000 Hungarian forint, equivalent to about 1.500 approximately.
More worrying than the sanction itself, there are reactions such as that of the local consumer protection office demanding that «cease this advertising for be detrimental to the physical, mental, emotional and moral development of children and minors«. For his part, the Hungarian parliamentarian Bolst Istvan He tried to boycott the brand in August by encouraging citizens not to consume their products. Also the anti-LGTBI group CitizenGo (linked to HazteOir) launched a petition to eliminate the advertising campaign, which reached 42.000 signatures. In his argumentation he affirms that «There is homosexual advertising on the streets of the city, in places where children can see it. These ads are already common in Western Europe. In our country we can still stop them«.
If all these initiatives have something in common, it is the deep fear of the visibility of the LGTBI collective in Hungary and in this line the CitizenGo statement continues: «if Hungarian society accepted that there would be posters, advertisements, movies and rainbow products«.
Coca-Cola's reaction has been to defend its campaign arguing that its advertisements symbolize the equality of all people and they have done so through an official statement: «We believe that we are all equal, regardless of nationality, religion, gender, age, ethnicity, language, hobbies or points of view. We believe that both heterosexuals and homosexuals have the right to love the people they love. In our advertising campaign, we underline the principles we stand for, such as our belief in the equality of people. We believe in a world based on these values, where everyone is free to live happily«.
With this declaration of principles, the company not only does not regret but reaffirms the principles that led it to raise its campaign. Hopefully, these types of conflicts serve to make the collective reality more and more visible despite the obstacles and repression exerted by the conservative power.
Source: losreplicantes.com, I am marketing
Photography: Coke
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