Amazon’s beautiful, wordless spot about two old friends who share a cup of tea and find out they share a similar problem is blowing up on social media. Why? Because the two friends happen to be a Vicar and a Muslim.
In the ad, both men realize they share a common problem caused by the amount of time they spend on their knees praying. Then, in an act of selflessness, they click on Amazon Prime and buy each other the same set of knee pads.
The ad began airing simultaneously in the US UK and Germany on Wednesday and US Today is saying that this may be the first time a Muslim Cleric has been featured in an ad in the United States. Certainly, it’s rare enough to be notable.
Jeff Bezos, Amazon’s CEO, tweeted how much he loved the new ad, but Amazon was also quick to point out that the ad wasn’t inspired by the recent election in the US, and that work on it started back in June.
In fact, it’s set in England and stars and actual priest and imam. The priest is Rev Gary Bradley, vicar of Little Venice in north-west London, and the imam is played by Zubeir Hassam, principal of the Muslim School Oadby, in Leicestershire.
The filmmakers took advice from both the Church of England and Muslim Council of Great Britain as well as the interfaith Christian Muslim Forum. Then to make it even more authentic, they shot in an actual church and an actual mosque in East London.
But despite all the attempts to be respectful, you can expect to see a backlash as people take sides for and against the ad in both the US and the UK. There will be those — hopefully a minority —who would view the display of common humanity in this spot as upsetting merely given the inclusion of an imam. After all, Lowe’s pulled their ads (which didn’t include any Muslims) from the TLC show All American Muslim based on the backlash to the placement alone.
The whole inclusion is not only going to rocket this thing to social media stardom, it’s going to overshadow the fact that Amazon kinda, sorta foreshadowed their own delivery force in the spot.
@JeffBezos when will “delivered by Amazon” be announced? #cantwait #customerobsession pic.twitter.com/CdEL4wNhaU
— Peter Kearns (@pkearns) November 18, 2016
Then again, business strategy announcements should always take a back seat to remembering our shared humanity.
