Global brands spend millions of dollars a year on advertising but sometimes even seasoned marketing professionals get it so wrong their campaigns backfire massively.
It’s always a risky move when international corporations try to use politics to sell their brand, and so it proved for Pepsi.
The video, which Pepsi had planned to use in a global ad campaign, featured reality TV star and supermodel Kendall Jenner coming across a scene of protest. She joins the crowd, sees a wall of police officers standing in front of the protest, looking menacing. Not to worry. Jenner knows what to do. She hands a cop a Pepsi, and guess what? He drinks it. The protesters go wild. Fist-pumping and cheering all around. A Muslim woman in a hijab snaps a picture to capture the moment the movement worked. Let’s all buy Pepsi.
The image of Jenner approaching the police clearly referenced the iconic photograph of Ieshia Evans, a black woman who stood tall in the face of heavily armored riot police during a Black Lives Matter protest following the fatal shooting of Alton Sterling by police in 2016.
The audacity of co-opting the visual language of resistance movements to sell sugary beverages prompted an immediate and harsh backlash on social media. The ad was widely mocked on social media and pulled from YouTube within 24 hours.
„Pepsi was trying to project global a message of unity, peace and understanding. Clearly, we missed the mark, and we apologize. We did not intend to make light of any serious issue. We are pulling the content and halting any further rollout. We also apologize for putting Kendall Jenner in this position,“ the company said in a statement to the Associated Press.
Before the ad was pulled, a spokesperson for Pepsi said, “This is a global ad that reflects people from different walks of life coming together in a spirit of harmony, and we think that’s an important message to convey.”
Now that people from all walks of life have come together in a spirit of harmony to hate the ad, the irony of that statement is just important.
Oh yeah, don’t miss to watch the video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AfCiV6ysngU
Written by Ivica Petrović
Sources:
https://www.marketingweek.com/2017/04/07/pepsi-scandal-prove-lack-diversity-house-work-flawed/
http://www.businessinsider.com/pepsis-controversial-kendall-jenner-ad-2017-4
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