WATCH: Kaepernick-Inspired Super Bowl Ad PETA Says NFL ‘Didn’t Want You to See’ Backfires

PETA released on Twitter this weekend an ad they say the NFL and Fox rejected for air during this year’s Super Bowl LIV. The Twitter roll-out, though, didn’t go all that well for them, either.

The animal rights group said the cartoon ad “pays homage” to former 49ers quarterback Colin Kaepernick and “movements rejecting injustice.” It features various scenes of animals kneeling, while a version of the national anthem plays, evoking Kaepernick’s kneeling campaign. It included the hashtag #EndSpecisism.

Watch:

THIS is the PETA #SuperBowl ad the @NFL apparently didn’t want you to see and pressured @FOXSports to snub.

It envisions a world where respect is the right of every being and pays homage to Kaepernick and movements rejecting injustice. https://t.co/kD1osnKhuX #EndSpeciesism pic.twitter.com/clXzU79aZV

— PETA (@peta) January 31, 2020

The group released a statement along with the ad. Here’s an excerpt:

“PETA is challenging speciesism, which is a supremacist worldview that allows humans to disrespect other living, feeling beings and to treat their interests as unimportant,” says PETA President Ingrid Newkirk. “Our patriotic Super Bowl spot envisions an America in which no sentient being is oppressed because of how they look, where they were born, who they love, or what species they are. It sends a message of kindness—one that the NFL should embrace, not silence.”

The intent to shame the networks and the NFL backfired, however.

At The Root, for example, Michael Harriot‘s article “PETA’s #PetLivesMatter Super Bowl Ad Is So White, Even the NFL Is Like: ‘Come On, Son!’” tore into the ad and the organization.

On one hand, PETA gentrifying the movement for social justice by likening the “human prejudice of fur coats, trained circus tigers and ribeyes” (yes, they actually said that), to the institutional racism that permeates America is despicable but expected. It’s just the next logical leap from Black Lives Matter to White and Blue Lives Matter. We know that whites are always gonna white, especially at the Super Bowl. I’m sure, somewhere in the PETA office, there’s someone explaining that “this is what MLK would have wanted.”

And on Twitter the reactions weren’t kinder.

I just wanna know how
• Someone pitched the idea
• Got team approval
• Made the ad
• Agreed on a finish product
• Submitted to a SuperBowl spot
• Posted it on Twitter

& no one thought that maybe comparing police brutality on black Americans to eating meat isnt a good idea. https://t.co/r5wVtuwdls

— Ovi Kabir (@TheOviKabir) January 31, 2020

So I’m guessing either no black people work in the marketing department or they don’t feel empowered enough to speak up. There is so much wrong with this @peta ad. https://t.co/Ksf27huXAb

— Femi Redwood (@femiredwood) January 31, 2020

“Whoa, #AllLivesMatter is such a crass erasure of anti-black racism and institutionalized violence, it’s hard to imagine anyone topping it when it comes to cultural tone-deafness”

PETA: Hold our kombucha https://t.co/htG44kOAco

— Jeff Yang (@originalspin) January 31, 2020

There were many, many more.

The game of making a Super Bowl ad that gets rejected, thus garnering attention without paying for the ad space, isn’t a new one. But a backfire like this? That’s gotta be some kind of NFL record.

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