Pepsi's recent campaign which featured across Facebook, Instagram and normal advertising channels showed Kendall Jenner subdue protest tensions by offering a police officer a can of Pepsi.
Pepsi sought to depict the brand as a cultural unifying force but received a lot of backlash in the media and many people criticized the messaging strategy present in the ad.
Twitter users were quick to point out that Pepsi's ad appropriated imagery from social justice movements like Black Lives Matter without concretely outlining its own real-world issues to tackle, making the entire effort look cynical.
The tone-deafness here was attributed by some to the ad being made by an in-house shop which spurred larger discussions about the lack of perspective in-house creative work can produce and the value of third-party agencies.
Brand messaging that gets political without looking to make a social good investment or fitting it into the larger brand story is likely to be rejected. A recent report from industry group 4A's found that 58% of consumers don’t want politics in their marketing at all, and widespread criticism of a push like Pepsi's speaks to that skepticism and the fine balance that must be struck.
Pepsi sought to depict the brand as a cultural unifying force but received a lot of backlash in the media and many people criticized the messaging strategy present in the ad.
Twitter users were quick to point out that Pepsi's ad appropriated imagery from social justice movements like Black Lives Matter without concretely outlining its own real-world issues to tackle, making the entire effort look cynical.
The tone-deafness here was attributed by some to the ad being made by an in-house shop which spurred larger discussions about the lack of perspective in-house creative work can produce and the value of third-party agencies.
Brand messaging that gets political without looking to make a social good investment or fitting it into the larger brand story is likely to be rejected. A recent report from industry group 4A's found that 58% of consumers don’t want politics in their marketing at all, and widespread criticism of a push like Pepsi's speaks to that skepticism and the fine balance that must be struck.
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