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Jerry Rice Popeye’s Ad Inspires a Bit of the Old Social Media Backlash

By Patrick Coffee 

Since today is a day of national unity, here’s a recent ad that created some controversy on social media—which has been a universally positive development in the history of the human race!

First, though: we love Popeye’s. Not afraid to say that fried chicken, biscuits and mashed potatoes are the best thing to buy when you get back home at 12:45 AM on a Friday night/Saturday morning after a round of 3 or 5 or 12 drinks at the local watering hole.

That said, a recent ad by AOR GSD&M in which former NFL star Jerry Rice promotes the chain while wearing a chicken helmet has inspired some takes of varying hotness.

The products were fun, especially the napkin shirt. But some of these tweets…

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Not all of the feedback was negative.

Here’s one from a guy who launched his own multimedia production company.

Oh jeez…here it comes.

Part of this may stem from the fact that Rice recently stepped into the political arena by commenting on Colin Kaepernick. He later apologized, writing, “When I said {All Lives Matter} I didn’t know about the movement going on between {Black Lives Matter}.”

Delenda Joseph of Uproxx also writes, “the image of a grinning black man wearing a helmet with a spinning drumstick plays too much on the ‘black people love chicken’ stereotype. Oddly enough, the stereotype has its roots in A Birth Of A Nation, the 1915 silent movie about the founding of the Ku Klux Klan.”

We can only say that Popeye’s is delicious when you’re drunk.

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