The ad was dumb, and I get why the condescending nature of the oversimplification didn't go over too well. That said, the happy, hippy "peace, love, and fun times" nature of soda adverts has been a thing for a while so not surprised they tried what they did. Failed badly, but could certainly see the thought process leading up to it at least, especially given the attempted tone of previous marketing strategies. Hell, I can even give them a little more credit than most in seeing the attempt as a "ok everyone, this is getting scary, can we all please calm down a little?" sort of message, even from a company that would probably only do so because they know that the rabid politicization is bad for their business.
Then we add politicized people into the mix and you realized it had no hopes of working well. Some people just want to be outraged and feels everything disagreed with is an aggressive action against them or their beliefs personally. Shame.
