Could have had the same impact, the message of lots of different kind of people coming together as one.
Personally, I think the impact of the "message" they were seemingly trying to send would've been more widely received and would've been more impactful...
However...
The controversy, and thus the amount of free additional publicity, would've been less.
Contrary to the ridiculous stereotypes of bigoted folks...most conservatives are not anti-immigrant. They have a strong disdain for illegal immigration, and they also have a strong disdain in general for multiculturalism and a seeming celebration of non-assimilation.
As I said in an earlier post, I think there would've been significantly less backlash had they went the route of everyone speaking English, but clearly affected by each person’s individual accent. Doing so would’ve kept one part of the message strong, that of a culturally diverse country, while helping to even out the strength of the other half of the message, that despite our diversity we all share a common heritage (love of country).
By having each sing in English, with each individual accent showing through, you’d have a situation where the song itself isn’t simply part of the theme, but a wonderful unification of the themes….a commonly understood, bonding, symbol of our heritage that is clear and yet unmistakably touched upon by the unique differences of each person singing in the commercial. By simply using the melody, rather than the words, being that unifying factor I think it actually weakens the broad appeal of pushing that message.
For those who appreciate multiculturalism, the presence and celebration of various cultures being spotlighted in the commercial would’ve been an uplifting bit of imagery. For those who appreciate assimilation, the presence of a clear common and patriotic thread through the singing of America the beautiful would’ve been an uplifting bit of imagery. Going this route, you have a broad appeal to those who come at the notion of immigration and cultural diversity in different ways.
I personally don’t think there’s anything WRONG with the commercial. It’s not something that got me bothered; but it wasn’t exactly something I found uplifting either. I generally don’t support the tendency towards celebrating ones previous heritage over embracing and assimilating into the heritage of your new home, so the clearly one-sided focus of it didn’t touch me as it likely would others. I just kind of shrugged at it, and in my head went “ugg…this is going to cause a controversy”.
But I do think with a simple tweak they could’ve created a far better commercial that would’ve still reached most of those it currently did, but also reach a lot more people as well. However, as I said…that’d probably cause less controversy, so in the end would’ve probably been a less “successful” commercial from a business stand point.