In an inexplicable move, Coca-Cola Ireland has omitted a scene depicting two men marrying from a new advert, which is part of a Europe-wide campaign.

The new advertising campaign, titled Reasons To Believe, is based on the concept that for every negative moment in life, there are many more positive ones taking place. In the main version of the advert – or rather, the version which is being used in other European countries – there is a scene where two men have just been married, and are surrounded by friends and family. In the Irish version of the new advert, however, no such scene exists.

To compare, below are the Dutch, Norwegian and British versions respectively of the new Reasons To Believe advertisement. The fourth video embedded is the version for Ireland.

This is the Irish version of the same advert:

Coca-Cola is one of the major sponsors of the controversial Sochi Winter Olympics, and the multinational company has already faced pressure from LGBT pressure group All Out for their involvement with the games, although the company decided to maintain the status quo despite meeting members of All Out to discuss LGBT rights in Russia.

At the time of writing (Saturday night) Coca-Cola Ireland’s offices in Dublin were closed, and therefore no comment could be obtained regarding the differences in the adverts. This story will be updated on Monday morning.

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Hat tip to Wolfgang Schmitt

UPDATE: Dec 30: This story has been updated, showing the Coca-Cola spokesperson’s statement to be untrue.

UPDATE @ 19:20: Since our article this morning, TheJournal.ie this afternoon has quoted an unnamed spokesperson for Coca Cola as saying that the omission was because Ireland still only has civil partnership, whereas they quote the United Kingdom as having equal marriage.

This, however, is untrue, as only two of the four countries within the UK – i.e. England and Wales – have equal marriage. The other two, Scotland and Northern Ireland, still only have civil partnership, yet the British version of the advert is being shown in both of those countries as well, so does not seem to us as being “relevant and valid for its own market[s]“.