The Italian Madonna Pepsi Teaser Commercial. I always loved how there was a commercial for the commercial. The American version of this was first shown on February 22, 1989 during the Grammy Awards revealing the forthcoming March 2 debut of Madonna's Pepsi commercial that would feature the new song from her new album, Like a Prayer.
The actual commercial was shown just once on March 2, 1989 during America's number one television program, The Cosby Show. It was simultaneously shown in 40 countries around the world to 250 million viewers. The first time in media history that a commercial had an around the world satellite premiere.
The following day on MTV, Madonna premiered her fabulous video for the song, Like a Prayer. The shyt hit the fan. Pepsi withheld further airings of the commercial which were to be edited down 30 second spots of the original. Madonna was also supposed to shoot a second commercial that would announce her upcoming tour with the Pepsi logo all up and through. Never happened.
Christian groups went berserk. Christian fundamentalist, Reverend Donald Wildmon was so appalled with Madonna's video that he threatened to have his American Family Association 380,000 subscribers boycott Pepsi. Then Catholic Bishop, Rene Gracido also called Madonna's video offensive and threatened to not only going after Pepsi but it's other multi-million dollar fast food restaurants, as well. To top it all off, the Pope and the Vatican released a statement damning Madonna. Pepsi bowed out. We never got the second commercial and Madonna said, Eat It!!! - (not an actual quote) - and kept the 5 million bucks.
Click Here for a previous post that shows a great program explaining and illustrating not only the Pepsi controversy but also one of Madonna's Greatest Videos of All Time - Like a Prayer: Videos That Rocked The World.
Trivia: On March 3, 2010 - 21 years to the day Like a Prayer premiered on MTV, Rev. Donald Wildmon stepped down from the American Family Association.
