Sunday, December 12, 2021

On that new Mohamed Salah Pepsi ad

There are apparently several multitudes of ads by Mohamed Salah for Pepsi. Actually I read today that he was a major reason for the decreased of anti-Moslem incidents in the UK (I take this with a grain of salt considering what happened when three players missed the penalties in the European Championship against Italy - namely Bukyao Saka, Marcus Rashford, and Jadon Sancho, as you may have guessed, the three of them are not Caucasians). Still, this brings us back to Pepsi and Mohamed Salah. I admit the version of the Rolling Stones "I can't get no satisfaction" in the ad is sublime. The story moves between Cairo, Liverpool (where he currently plays for the Liverpool F.C.), Rome and many other places across the world (and the virtual world too!!), in what could easily be a case of "Run Forrest, Run" - where Salah starts running since he was a kid, and grows up - ahem - running as everyone (but him) enjoys Pepsi. There are I admit very endearing parts to the ad, and other bits which are puzzling (I think it should come with a disclaimer not to run beneath a moving Pepsi truck as the Salah Avatar did in the virtual world!). Actually, everyone else is more natural on camera than Salah to be honest (but I suppose this is what happens where you hire professional actors). Well, I guess one learns not to expect a lot from celebrities in ads. But at least there seems to be some effort done in this one. See the ad here.