Ads showing any kind of racial diversity can now attract heaping amounts of vitriol online — most of it delivered anonymously — as State Farm discovered last month when it posted an ad of a black man proposing to a white woman on Twitter. Anti-Muslim remarks, like “they don't belong here,” peppered the comments under Chevrolet's video in June of two twins from Los Angeles, named Ruqaya and Qassim, who were accepted into a soccer program the company sponsors. They were 8 years old when the video, which did not mention religion, was made.
Mr. Brady said the agency had prepared Honey Maid for potentially hateful responses to its ad, though it fielded fewer than he feared. (On Facebook, the top comments are appreciative and heartfelt.) Nida'a Moghrabi, a cheesecake seller and mother of three daughters who starred in the commercial with a neighbor she befriended a few years ago, said she had initially been irritated by some rude comments on Facebook and YouTube until she realized how ubiquitous such remarks were.
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