Adidas’ new ad for the Copa América 2016 is causing a social media frenzy with the Colombian community. The German company has manufactured the Colombian jerseys for the past five years. But this year, while promoting their new home jerseys, Adidas did the one thing the Colombian community cannot stand—misspell Colombia as “Columbia.”
The ad, which was all over stores, includes four star players and the largest word “Columbia” splayed across them. The misspelling was also used on the brand’s website, but has since been taken down. Carlos Pardo is one of the men behind the campaign #ItsColombiaNotColumbia established back in 2013. The campaign was created to express how exhausted Colombians are with the frequent mistake.
“More than it being a bother, it’s the fact that a name is a very important part of someone’s identity,” Pardo said in an interview with The Huffington Post. “If my name is Carlos and they call me something different repeatedly, I’m going to feel bad. We just want people to call us by our name, but the issue goes beyond the name, we want people to be interested in the positive things that are happening here.”
Many people took to social media to express their frustration with the situation.
This is getting OLD #ItsColombiaNotColumbia https://t.co/1Ygcj0W1VU
— Angela Granados (@angelagrana) June 7, 2016
How NOT to earn the respect of a country. @adidassoccer #marketingfail #fail #CopaAmerica #ItsColombiaNotColumbia pic.twitter.com/KRQV0LLXrz
— Jorge E Alonso (@jedalonso) June 7, 2016
Adidas has since apologized to the Colombian community in a statement saying: “We value our partnership with the Colombian Football Federation and we apologize for our mistake. We removed these graphics and are quickly installing new versions today.”
Now, good luck to the ColOmbian Copa América team!