AeroMexico, the national airline of our neighbor to the south, operates out of Mexico City and was facing a troubling problem: How do they entice travelers to fly down to the sunny beaches of Acapulco or to the history-rich cultural mecca of the Yucatán peninsula when so many Americans hold such a dim view of the entire nation?
It’s become even more of a problem since the election of Donald Trump. Conservative leaders in America have long preached the evils of illegal immigration — while benefiting from it in the form of cheap labor, a workforce willing to do jobs that Americans won’t, and a cross-section of the population that pays taxes and feeds the Medicare and Social Security system without ever being able to collect those benefits. But Trump brought with him a special kind of “out loud” racism that’s allowed his supporters — and even those in his Cabinet — to vilify Mexican immigrants like never before.
The airline tried everything it could think of to overcome the mental stigma against Mexico that’s been steadily getting worse for two years now, even interviewing those along the US side of the southern border to see what it would take to get them to fly to Mexico on holiday. One interview, which you’re about to see in their video below, exemplified the problem:
AEROMEXICO NARRATOR: Do you like tequila?
TEXAN NAMED BILL: Yes.
AM: Do you like burritos?
BILL: Yes.
AM: Do you like Mexico?
BILL: No!”
So the company tried a brand new approach. They decided to offer DNA testing to potential customers, then give them discounts based on the results. But the catch is, the discount lines up with what percentage of your DNA is Mexican. Someone with twenty-two percent Mexican DNA, for example, would get a twenty-two percent discount.
As you can imagine, many Americans were stunned to find out they had any Mexican DNA, despite the fairly obvious fact that much of the south used to be Mexico and it stands to reason that folks who never lived outside the south are more likely than most to be part Mexican.
The results are as spectacular as they are hilarious. Watch:
Featured image via screen capture
