WATCH: New Coca-Cola Campaign is Eye-Opening in Prejudicial Times

If chills don’t sweep your skin in the first two seconds (unlikely), the hair on the back of your neck will stand at the 1:11 mark, we promise. Coca-Cola Middle East launched the famous red and white can free of any label or logo during the holy month of Ramadan as part of an anti-prejudice, pro-tolerance campaign. The limited-edition label-less can wears a simple and obvious statement we humans may have forgotten today, “Labels are for cans not for people.” With that came a moving, eye-opening short film that documents how strangers interact with one another when the lights are out.

Seated at a dinner table are six men; the conversation remaining fluent and engaging. All that awkward small talk between unfamiliar faces doesn’t exist when the lights are off. One sixth of the experiment is heavily tattooed–we’re talking full body, head, face, hands, you name it. Not to our surprise, he is intelligent and wise with a sense of humor. When the lights flick on though, the other participants are stunned at his appearance more than any other individual at the table. One man admits, “If I see someone like him anywhere outside, I’ll definitely not sit and talk to him.”

With this experience under their belt, we have a feeling he and the other five participants will make an effort to forgo stereotypes of not only tattooed people but of all individuals. We’d love to see a female and co-ed version of this experiment, too. Better yet, if this experiment took trend around the world, we bet a lot more people would think differently and more highly of others. In any case, this video provides much to learn from in an effort to shatter preconceived stereotypes.

Coca-Cola, we applaud you.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FIPmDQ7A5j4