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UPDATED: This Super Bowl Sunday, don’t forget Uber eats — but also, as the food delivery service has learned, don’t forget that trying to downplay a life-threatening allergy is bad publicity.
Uber Eats, a division of the ride-sharing company, launched its 60-second Super Bowl 2024 commercial, centered on the recurring joke of oblivion. The ad, which marks Uber Eats’ fourth year at the Super Bowl, features David Schwimmer and Jennifer Aniston (who forgets she worked with him on “Friends” for 10 years); David and Victoria Beckham (who don’t remember the Spice Girls), as well as Jelly Roll trying to get the tattoos off his face and Usher ignoring the fact that he just performed the halftime show.
The ad, from creative advertising agency Special Group, also shows ordinary people doing comically absent-minded nonsense. But one scene was decidedly unfunny for many: A man eating a spoonful of peanut butter from a jar (who has broken out in hives and whose left eye has swollen shut due to an allergic reaction) looks at the food label. and comments: “Are there peanuts in peanut butter?… Oh, it’s the main ingredient.”
The ad was criticized by nonprofit advocacy group Food Allergy Research & Education, which said in a statement: “We are incredibly disappointed by @UberEats’ use of life-threatening food allergies as humor in their Super Bowl ad. The suffering of more than 33 million Americans with this condition is no joke. Life-threatening food allergy is a disease, not a diet. Enough is enough.”
On Friday (February 9), Dr. Sung Poblete, executive director of FARE, said in a statement that she had spoken with Uber and that the company had agreed to remove the offending scene. Uber has “made a change to the ad that will air to the broad Super Bowl audience” by “removing the reference to a peanut allergy,” she said.
Uber declined to comment.
On Sunday morning, Uber Eats posted the updated version of the ad on YouTube which will air during CBS’ Super Bowl broadcast; The new ad replaces the peanut butter scene with about 2 seconds of a guy who has forgotten what it means to “take a seat.” He The original ad is still on YouTube. in an unlisted link.
The original Uber Eats ad includes a disclaimer of sorts: Small text beneath the beehive-ridden peanut butter guy reads, “Please don’t forget that there are peanuts in peanut butter.”
But that was not enough to appease critics, who took to social media to express disbelief and fury. “You had a really great commercial until the guy with the peanut allergy,” wrote one commenter on X (aka Twitter), in a post that has since been deleted. “How about you change it to a guy who forgets he’s diabetic and doesn’t take insulin, or a soldier who has PTSD and forgets his medication? No, that wouldn’t be funny either, right? Edit the commercial.”
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