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We reported earlier how Barcelona defender Dani Alves had a banana thrown at him mid-match, and instead of ignoring the insult, he decided to eat the banana!
After that a slew of other players, including Neymar and Mario Balotelli, have posted pictures of themselves eating bananas, including the slogan: “We are all monkeys.”
While we thought this was a spontaneous bit of viral altruism, apparently the whole idea has been planned all along.
But not in a bad way!
According to reports from Spain, after Neymar and Dani were racially abused in Espanyol in late March, they decided to decided to team up with marketing agency Loducca, eat the next banana thrown at them, and launch the awareness campaign.
According to Guga Ketzer, a partner of Loducca, the idea was simple:
“Actions speak louder than words. A gesture needs no translation and what we├óΓé¼Γäóre seeing is that this has gone viral, globally. The idea was for Neymar to eat the banana, but in the end it was Alves, and that works just the same. The best way to beat prejudice is to take the sting out of the racist action so it isn├óΓé¼Γäót repeated. We created #somostodosmacacos and #weareallmonkeys, with the gesture of eating a banana, and it has been turned into a movement.”
Whether this was planned or not is irrelevant to the plan’s success!
Keep up the good work guys!
