In the first quarter of the Super Bowl on Sunday, in front of nearly 100 million viewers watching on CBS, Anheuser-Busch ran a commercial for its Bon & Viv hard seltzer brand. Two women, clad in cropped short-sleeved collared shirts, played the mythical mermaid founders of the brand and pitched the beverage to a group of talking sharks under the sea.
It generated some buzz, and that would have been that. But in subsequent days, some who saw the commercial were reminded of a first-person essay published by Vice in December titled “My Bikini Audition From Hell Shows How Little Hollywood Has Changed.