A new and controversial PETA ad that will not air during the Super Bowl has gone viral on the internet. The ad is titled “Redemption”.
Why won’t it air during the big game? A rep from PETA tells CountryLiving.com that the spot was initially set to air during the Super Bowl, and the company was to pay around $10 million for it, but eventually, PETA decided to run the ad online only.
A section of PETA’s press release for the commercial reads, “The group is releasing ‘Redemption’ online after NBC demanded that it pay $10.4 million for a 30-second slot before the network would consider the ad, even though multiple reports state that comparable spots cost an average of $5 million.”
According to Country Living, however, a spokesperson for NBC responded to these claims by saying, “The price we quoted PETA was consistent with the way we work with advertisers who are seeking to purchase a single ad in the Super Bowl.” The duration of the commercial on Youtube is 1:41.
The ad features actor James Cromwell (American Horror Story, Babe, The Green Mile, The Artist) as a priest who listens to a businessman who is divulging his sins as a meat industry executive. In a confessional, the businessman tells Cromwell’s priest character, “Forgive me Father, for I have sinned… I have lied to the world. I work in the meat industry, I’m the guy who came up with ‘Free Range’ on all the chicken packaging. But there is no range. They’re just big warehouses where they’re all crammed in to. And all natural? Not so much.”
After going on in detail about how he “pretty much tricked millions of people into thinking the animals they eat all eat good lives, didn’t suffer”, the businessman says, “But to be fair, those people all want to believe what I’m telling them because everyone wants to feel good about where their food comes from.”
Eventually, Cromwell’s priest responds by saying that there isn’t any forgiveness for what the businessman has done.
This isn’t the first time PETA has pulled an ad from the Super Bowl. In 2016, they submitted a spot titled Last Longer but it was said to be “too racy”. PETA’s website reads, “In 2016, our steamy Last Longer ad may not have hit the airwaves, but it racked up millions of views online, quickly becoming PETA’s most-viewed YouTube video of all time.” You can check out ‘Last Longer’, and a handful of Peta’s other banned Super Bowl ads here.
In a press release for this year’s ad, PETA Senior Vice President Lisa Lange said, “No Hail Mary can absolve someone for duping consumers into feeling good about buying ‘humane’ meat, a myth exploded by countless undercover exposés inside the businesses that produce it.” She continued, “PETA’s Super Bowl spot encourages meat-eaters to seek redemption by choosing only truly humane meals: vegan wings, vegan hamburgers—vegan everything.”