Adidas' latest Copa América ad campaign is making a lot of people upset, namely the consumers the ad is targeted at: Colombians.
The German company's new ad for the Colombian soccer team's new home jerseys features four of the team's stars, including World Cup top scorer James Rodriguez, and a huge spelling mistake -- the sign spelled the country "Columbia" not Colombia. The athletic company also misspelled the country's name on its website, which has since been corrected.
Adidas, who has manufactured the Colombian team's jerseys since 2011, is far from the first organization to make the spelling error. In fact, the misspelling is so common it inspired a group of Colombians to start the social media campaign #ItsColombiaNotColumbia in 2013.
Back then, Carlos Pardo, one of the men behind the campaign, explained to The Huffington Post why it's so important that people spell his country's name correctly.
"More than it being a bother, it’s the fact that a name is a very important part of someone’s identity," Pardo told HuffPost. "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."
Several fans have also expressed their indignation over the ad on social media, including the "It's Colombia, Not Columbia" Facebook page.
One Twitter user was so upset, she wrote an open letter to the company explaining why it is in fact "a big deal" to spell Colombia correctly.
"In a world where ignorance is infamous when it comes to the acknowledgement of third world countries, it is unbeknownst to me why the correct spelling of COLOMBIA is so difficult to comprehend for the general public," Stephanie P. wrote in the letter. "However, it is even more infuriating to see a MULTI-BILLION dollar company, as Adidas, misspell the national campaign of the country's team they are trying to promote and drive revenue from their name."
The Huffington Post reached out to Adidas for comment, the company apologized for the mistake and said they're working on replacing the ads.
We value our partnership with the Colombian Football Federation and apologize for our mistake. We removed these graphics and are quickly installing new versions today.
H/T Remezcla
This article has been updated to include a response from Adidas.
Before You Go
