Mondelez International, which manufactures popular cookies and crackers under the Nabisco brand, recently launched its “This is Wholesome” advertising campaign. The commercial for Honey Maid products features several different kinds of American families, including biracial and gay ones.The company is headquartered in Deerfield, Illinois, a Chicago suburb, and is a manufacturer of chocolate, biscuits, gum, confectionery, coffee, and powdered beverages. The company consists of the global snacking and food brands of the former Kraft Foods Inc. Mondelez International’s portfolio includes several billion-dollar brands such as Cadbury and Milka chocolate, Jacobs coffee, Toblerone, Nabisco and Oreo cookies, LU, Tang powdered beverages, and Trident gums. Mondelez International has annual revenue of approximately $36 billion and operations in more than 80 countries.
When enormous multi-national companies such as Mondelez spends massive amounts of money on an advertising campaign, they have very good reason for doing so. For, they not only want to sell their products, but they also want to influence public opinion and shape cultural attitudes and mores. Why? Megalithic industries are always interested in pushing their way past the family barriers of religion and tradition, and replacing those trusted safe-guards with their brand image. For instance, in my era of the 1970s and 80s, this was most evident in the ritualistic “Cola Wars” and the accompanying campaigns which promised perfect happiness and harmony: epitomized by the use of the song “I’d Like To Teach the World to Sing” in the landmark “Buy the World a Coke” series of commercials. Today, we seeing this same phenomena in the electronics and entertainment spheres; this has been sickly typified by Lady Gaga referring to her fans as a quasi-cult of the “Little Monsters.” Nowadays, as our families become more and more dysfunctional and disenfranchised, and religion (specifically Christianity) is increasingly seen as restrictive and hopelessly backward, entertainers and products have replaced the bonds of Traditional Love that once marked the center of society.