Pepsi Forced To Apologise After Using Cristiano Ronaldo Voodoo Dolls In Ill-Judged Advert Campaign

Chris Wright

20th, November 2013

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By Chris Wright

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Pepsi’s Swedish subsidiary have been forced to apologise after suffering a rather significant backlash to a series of viral adverts they ran before Sweden’s World Cup play-off second leg against Portugal which featured a Cristiano Ronaldo doll being tortured in many and varied ways.

At current count, over 43,000 angry Portuguese fans have joined a Facebook group entitled “Nunca mais vou beber Pepsi” (‘Never drink Pepsi again’), with most leaving messages to declare their intention to never touch the offending soft drink ever again.

This, of course, caught Pepsi’s eye and the Swedish-language arm of the company have since taken to their official Facebook page to apologise for their ill-judged adverts, leaving the following statement:

“We would never want to put the sport or the spirit of competition in a negative light. We regret if people were offended by the posts; they were immediately taken down. We would like to extend our apologies to all concerned.”

Anyway, as you’re probably well aware by now, Pepsi’s little faux-pas didn’t seem to affect Ronaldo much, as the Portuguese man-mountain steamed ahead and downed Sweden with a comprehensive hat-trick to send his country through to Brazil 2014.

We think a celebratory can of Pepsi Max is in order.