The ad caused so much controversy that it was written up in pretty much every paper in Scandinavia, that's earned media for you new folks here. Some of this earned media was negative, but a lot of it spent time figuring out what the truth of the ad's claims was... Effectively making it part of the SAS campaign.

SAS put out a statement saying that the campaign has somehow been "kidnapped", the negative reactions had come in such a pattern to be suspect. They stated "We do not want to risk becoming a platform for someone else's values, which we do not stand for", which explains why they shut down the comments but not why they initially removed the ad. This garnered even more media attention. For example, from Peter Karaszi, who wrote an opinion piece in Expressen, declaring that "the culture war is why SAS removed the film".

SAS commercials have written communicative history, but not in the way the company thought. To avoid future failures, why not strive for the diversity you advocate in your advertising, both internally and with your partners - not just twentysomethings in Stockholm's inner city who all think and care more about their egos than about customers and businesses?

I agree! Somewhat ironically, perhaps, is that I made that exact same point in Sweden's leading advertising news back in 2016. "Våga anställa annorlunda, på riktigt", as a response to an article about the need to "hire people named something other than Anders."