The Pepsi advert featuring Kendall Jenner has sparked a backlash online. Handing a can of soda to a police officer at a peace protest was maybe not the best idea.
Pepsi tried to benefit from “Black Lives Matter” campaign using Kendall Jenner to hand a can of Pepsi to the police officer. The ad has been on air for 2 days, yet the controversial reactions are hitting social media and especially Twitter, hard.
In the almost 3 minutes ad, famous model Kendall Jenner notices a passing rainbow coalition of marchers while she’s in a modelling shoot. There is a girl photographer wearing a hijab working on her project, but eventually she gives up and becomes a part of the march.
The climax point of the ad is that Kendall gives up shooting, wipes away her lipstick, takes off her blonde wig and and joins the protest. As she gets into the crowd, she grabs a can of Pepsi and walks up to give it to the police officer. He accepts the can a this all ends with “live bolder, live louder, live for now.” This comes with no inspiration even to its own audience.
A Pepsi spokesperson said in an emailed statement in response to the backfire,
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.
Apparently, the ad aimed to reach out millennials, but skipped the idea that millennials are too smart to realize that it is pointless and gets nowhere. Kendall Jenner is a perfect model and can do anything for sure, yet what is the point of handing a Pepsi to solve the matters and the most of all, why are they trying to sell a product over this serious situation?
Anyways, the theme song Skip Marley’s ‘Lions’ and the production are very good, too bad it’s wasted like this. It’s hard to understand why such an established brand made a strategical mistake like this.
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