Controversy is good business:

Evolutionary Dr Pepper ad spurs religious kerfuffle

Dr Pepper

This ad has created an online uproar.

By Ben Popken, NBC News contributor

Dr Pepper marched directly into controversy a week ago when it launched its “March of Progress” ad campaign. And the uproar has not abated.

On Sept. 13, the soft drink maker posted to its Facebook wall an ad using the classic “March of Progress” image tweaked to promote the “evolution of flavor.”

The whimsical ad showed a chimpanzee dragging his knuckles, followed by a semi-erect hominid reaching for a Dr Pepper, followed by a fully upright man walking and gulping a Dr Pepper.

The images are captioned “Pre-Pepper,” “Pepper Discovery,” and “Post-Pepper” respectively.

Sounds harmless. Even banal. But about 7,000 comment and nearly 33,000 likes later, the ad is still provoking reaction by creationists who say it promotes the theory of evolution.

Some are even threatening to boycott Dr Pepper. That in turn has stoked evolutionists to make counter comments. Then there's folks jumping on the pig pile just for laughs.

After all, we are talking about a soda pop ad, right?

The debate also blew up on popular link-sharing site Reddit, whose users flooded the thread to mock the outrage and post parody comment, further inflaming the debate and spreading the conversation ...

Dr Pepper has posted over 450 images to its Facebook wall since 2009. Most garnered a few hundred comments... proving: