"Everybody understands the importance of sun protection except the ones that need it most -- our kids. The solution? Parents who drop it or the bird that drops its load," a narrator says at the beginning of the commercial.
Then a seagull drone is shown flying around on a beach, dropping that "load" onto children playing in the sand.
While the children and their parents in the commercial excitedly laugh and smile, viewers are criticizing the commercial, which was submitted to this year’s Cannes Lions advertising festival.
"It's the most stupid thing I think I've seen in my whole life," said John Hegarty, advertising executive, Cannes jury president and founder of the agency Bartle Bogle Hegarty. "I actually thought the Monty Python team had gotten together and entered it into (Cannes), to see if we would vote for it."
Nivea teamed up with German ad agency Jon von Matt/Elbe to build the seagull drone, which nearby agency members directed toward unsuspecting children using a remote control. The workers crouched in nearby shrubbery as they used a device to detect which kids on the beach had already been smothered with sunscreen and which ones needed a dose from the bird.
"This is, without question, at the cutting edge of technology and brand integration," Hegarty said sarcastically at a press conference, according to Adweek.
Jung von Matt/Elbe told Adweek that the company isn't promoting the commercial, The Huffington Post reported.
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