The importance of choosing the right representative.
Today on the cutting room table, we have what seems to be the most controversial advertisement from the summer of 2017: The Pepsi Commercial, starring none other than Kendall Jenner herself.
The ad was pulled out of television networks shortly after the outburst of public distain towards the advertisement. They pulled out the commercial with the following statement: "Pepsi was trying to project a global 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 removing the content and halting any further rollout. We also apologize for putting Kendall Jenner in this position" (adage.com).
The question is, how did a large company miss their mark in such a simple message? Simple, they used the wrong representative in their ad. This in turn made their ad seem to trivialize the movements and message that it's trying to represent. The backlash of the advertisement was not because of the advertisement itself, but because of Kendall Jenner. There was an interesting comment left on the advertisement that states: "Basically she accepted to be the face of social injustice, despite the fact that she's rich, white, and never experienced social injustice. That's why this is offensive especially for the persons who experience it daily (namely POCs, knowing that the ad was released at a time where the BLM movement was very active) and who don't want to be "represented" by someone who don't know anything about their struggle.
The concept of the ad in itslef is not bad, it's just the fact that a Jenner/Kardashian plays the main role in it that raised the critics. People would have wanted someone more legitimate." The comment suggests that the appointment of Kendall Jenner as the main "character" of the advertisement was a mistake because she is not a popular face in the peace movements, and is even counteractive in the belief of some people.
The ad was pulled out of television networks shortly after the outburst of public distain towards the advertisement. They pulled out the commercial with the following statement: "Pepsi was trying to project a global 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 removing the content and halting any further rollout. We also apologize for putting Kendall Jenner in this position" (adage.com).
The question is, how did a large company miss their mark in such a simple message? Simple, they used the wrong representative in their ad. This in turn made their ad seem to trivialize the movements and message that it's trying to represent. The backlash of the advertisement was not because of the advertisement itself, but because of Kendall Jenner. There was an interesting comment left on the advertisement that states: "Basically she accepted to be the face of social injustice, despite the fact that she's rich, white, and never experienced social injustice. That's why this is offensive especially for the persons who experience it daily (namely POCs, knowing that the ad was released at a time where the BLM movement was very active) and who don't want to be "represented" by someone who don't know anything about their struggle.
The concept of the ad in itslef is not bad, it's just the fact that a Jenner/Kardashian plays the main role in it that raised the critics. People would have wanted someone more legitimate." The comment suggests that the appointment of Kendall Jenner as the main "character" of the advertisement was a mistake because she is not a popular face in the peace movements, and is even counteractive in the belief of some people.
The Pepsi Ad was a big change for the company (mostly in a negative way). I feel that people shouldn't focus on Kendall Jenner too much but the many other people in the ad. Other than Jenner, the people in the ad show protests of peace and celebration. I can see what message Pepsi was trying to say but people took it the wrong way. I bet if there was a black person or a person of any other ethnicity other than white, this would have been a normal commercial with no problems. I like how people talk about profiling people through race and culture when people profiled Jenner as a white person with money and no experience of social injustice (like the stereotypical racist white person). Overall, people just make assumptions without really looking at something thoroughly and people tend to believe these assumptions and don't look at the perspective on their own.
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