Portugal fans hit back at Swedish Pepsi who launched a negative Voodoo Doll campaign against Cristiano Ronaldo

What seemed like a complete fail on behalf of the PR persons of Swedish Pepsi has prompted 25,000 and counting Portugal fans to swear off Pepsi.

In the run-up to Portugal’s triumph in Stockholm, Pepsi in Scandinavia launched a negative campaign against Cristiano Ronaldo in which the Selecao superstar was depicted as a voodoo doll in a series of soon-to-be-dead images.

The Pepsi campaign included pictures of voodoo doll Ronaldo tied onto train tracks, suffocated by a crushed can over his head, and a picture of the doll covered from head to toe with needles.

Reponse to the pictures was quick and extremely disgruntled, causing Pepsi to take down the photos immediately. The company (which happens to count Lionel Messi as a spokesman) then posted a groveling apology -

“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.”

Cristiano Ronaldo scored all four of Portugal’s goals in their 4-2 aggregate win to qualify for the World Cup, and Portugal fans were quick enough to come up with clever photoshopped pictures of their own -