With a title like that you already know the ad we’re talking about this week. For me it’s one of the worst examples of advertising because it is completely and utterly tone deaf, but I’m jumping ahead of myself. Let’s get some history in.
Ads of Pepsi past
Pepsi has always been in the shadow of Coca-Cola to a certain degree and there were serious debates in the playground about which was better (Cola for the win by the way). It’s unsurprising that for much of the last 30-40 years they’ve positioned themselves as the anti-coke. Where Coke was all about family and coming together, Pepsi was about how cool it was to drink.
For a big chunk of time their strategy was all about let’s have a celebrity or sport star endorse our product. My little cousin when he was 10 was convinced Pepsi was healthier than Cola because it had Ronaldinho on the poster for the advertising. Then there was the at this point iconic we will rock you ad featuring Beyoncé, Pink, Britney Spears and Enrique Iglesias which was on TV all the time when I was a kid.
Then something changed. Sports stars whose bodies were at the height of physical perfection didn’t want to be associated with something so unhealthy. So what were Pepsi to do? They spent a few years cranking out generic adverts of people having a good time at a party, none of them got anyone’s attention. That was until 2017.
Live Bolder
Here we go. This ad is quite frankly a mess. You might want to re-watch the Pepsi Ad from 2017 so that you can get a better picture of what I’m talking about. As the title said this was Pepsi’s attempt to be woke, for those of you who don’t know what that means when someone is woke they have awoken to the wrongs in the world. They suddenly understand everything wrong with the world and have all the solutions. While it comes from a good place it often comes across as pretentious, superficial or lacking true depth of understanding. All of which are things that we see in this ad. On the surface and 3 years removed, it may seem fairly inoffensive, but let’s break it down.
The ad shows people of all colours and races, being creative. If that was the ad, that would be fine, but nope! We keep going on. We see a group of people in a peace protest marching and gathering people as they go. Kendall Jenner sees them and then takes off her blonde wig and passes it to her assistant and joins the crowd. Said crowd are drinking Pepsi and having a good time until they’re stopped by Police standing in the middle of the road.
By and large this is a homage to the BLM protests that had been happening around that time where police and protesters clashed. This is already a shaky area to centre your ad around. Then the whole thing ends with Kendall Jenner giving a police officer a Pepsi, which he drinks and then stands down from his duty.
What have we learned?
It implied that all the protestors have to do is offer the police Pepsi and everything would be fine! Their argument at the time was that
“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”.
That may be true, but the outrage from the African American community and many others showed they felt their struggle was being used to sell products, that African American people weren’t in the room to be a part of the conversation, it missed the point and it belittled the work done by prominent black leaders like Martin Luther King Jr. The New York times did a deeper dive on the issues surrounding the ad which is worth a read.
Pepsi quickly pulled the ad after all of the outrage and the jokes, but the damage was done. So what have we learned? Well for one if you’re going to use a political issue make sure you have your facts right for one. Most importantly be respectful of the issue! Don’t trivialise the issue. Better yet steer clear of using it in your advertising! Now I know I seem to be picking on Pepsi a bit here but, I’m doing it to make a point. As a society we hold everything to a higher standard and when you’re tackling a social cause you have to be extra careful! In future if you’re a company that wants to use it’s platform have those discussions with people affected, be the change needed.
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