Pepsi Apologise for Cristiano Ronaldo Voodoo Doll Adverts

Cristiano Ronaldo's superb hat-trick sealed a World Cup place for Portugal at Sweden's expense in their World Cup play-off, but one attempt to knock Ronaldo off his stride has led to an apology.

Pepsi in Sweden ran a series of adverts showing Ronaldo as a voodoo doll, in a series of less-than-comfortable positions.

Rather than have either of its presumable desired effects—boosting the brand's popularity and helping Sweden through—it merely created a backlash.

As Yahoo! Sports' Dirty Tackle blog explains, not only did Sweden bow out, but 116,000 Facebook users (and rising) in Portugal signed up to a group vowing never to drink Pepsi again.

Pepsi has responded to the campaign by removing the voodoo ads (other campaigns included a Ronaldo doll covered in pins, and crushed by a Pepsi Max can). 

They have also issued an apology, as reported by Who Ate All The Pies:

"

We would never want to put the sport or the spirit of competition in a negative light. We regret if people were offended by the posts; they were immediately taken down. We would like to extend our apologies to all concerned.

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In short, the moral of this story is not to mock Cristiano Ronaldo. Frankly, it rarely ends well.