”Thank you for causing so much controversy”

John Hand’s Ad Breakdown – the Magazine’s review of advertising on BBC News – features Madonna’s banned advert for Pepsi today, the week when “Like A Prayer” was heard for the very first time 20 years ago.

• The Advert: Madonna, singing Like a Prayer for Pepsi in 1989.

• The Schtick: The cola wars in full swing, Pepsi wheeled out its big gun – the Queen of Pop – to perform her latest single.

• The Breakdown: It was, the TV voiceover promised us, not to be missed. The Material Girl was to put the fizz into Pepsi’s campaign – for a fee of $5m.

The premiere of Madonna’s Like A Prayer in a two-minute advert was notable enough to be reported on ITN’s News At Ten, and ITV ran trailers advertising when it would be shown – 8.12pm on Thursday 2 March, 1989.

But within 48 hours of the much-hyped worldwide premiere, the company pulled the ad, and it was never screened again.

This was because influential church groups in the United States had threatened a mass boycott of Pepsi products, troubled by the Catholic-born star’s ongoing flirtation with religious imagery.

The ad starts with Madonna watching black-and-white footage supposedly of her own eighth birthday party.

Then magically, the star and her younger self switch places. Mini-Madonna wanders around the singer’s apartment, marvelling at posters of her adult self and finds the same doll she has been given as a birthday gift. The ad ends with grown-up Madonna telling her young self “go ahead, make a wish” – as they both drink Pepsi.

That slogan was intended to become as synonymous with Pepsi as “It’s the real thing” is with rivals Coke. But the feelgood factor did not last long for its executives.

Within a couple of days came the second act in the drama. The video for Like A Prayer hit TV screens.

It opened with Madonna fleeing the scene of a rape. She runs into a church and prays before a statue of a saint, played by a black actor, before flashbacks reveal she witnessed the attack, carried out by a white man. But an innocent black man (the saint’s double) is arrested.

There are burning crosses and Madonna suffers stigmata before heading off to put right this miscarriage of justice.

Within hours, American religious groups complained about the portrayal of Jesus Christ (as some viewers assumed the saintly character to be) as a black man being kissed by Madonna.

With MTV unlikely to ban the video, the groups tried a new tack – threaten to boycott Pepsi.

The campaign was promptly shelved. Twenty years on, a Pepsi spokesman says it was an unfortunate episode.

“While our commercial bore no resemblance to the video, many people who were offended by the video made no distinction between the two. We felt that the only appropriate step under the circumstances was to immediately stop the airing commercial.”

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continue reading “Madonna’s banned advert “, on Ad Breakdown, written by John Hand, BBC News.

Thanks to Stella Steven and to Jamesy from Madonna-TV.