On Monday, Pepsi released their new ad starring model Kendall Jenner and it’s raised a lot of controversy. The video starts off with Jenner wearing a blonde wig at a photo shoot while a protest passes by. A man nods for her to come join the protest, so she rips off the wig and joins the crowd to protest. During the protest, she grabs a Pepsi from a cooler and walks through the crowd looking around.
She approaches a wall of police officers and offers a Pepsi to one of the police officers, he accepts the Pepsi and the rally goes wild depicting everyone getting along with the officers now that he has a Pepsi.
The problem people had with this ad was that it made protest seem very sugar-coated. That all you needed to do in order to not get arrested for protesting was to hand an officer a sugared beverage and everything will be A-okay. People found it offensive considering the number of people who protesting during the Black Lives Matter movement who experienced arrest, beatings, and other suppression by police officers. The Pepsi can symbolizes some sort of easily-achievable peace or end to the movement, and for many people that is dismissing the seriousness of the situation in order to sell a soda.
The ad was considered very unrealistic to many people. And social media has raged a storm over the Pepsi Company and Kendall Jenner.
Since social media has delivered a back-lash to Pepsi in the wake of the ad, even calling for protests and boycotts of Pepsi Products, Pepsi decided to take down the ad and respond with this 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 a serious issue. We are removing the content and halting any further roll out. We also apologize for putting Kendall Jenner in this position”.
This isn’t the first time Pepsi has had a controversial ad. A few years back they released an ad that had a few black men in a police lineup. In between them was a goat, then a woman behind the glass that was obviously beaten up pretty bad. People complained that the ad normalized the stereotype of women being abused by black males. The ad was quickly taken down and Pepsi, again, publicly apologized.
Since this isn’t their first mistake, Pepsi products should be boycotted until a few people are released from their jobs. The fact that none of the writers or producers thought to themselves that the ads were probably sending an inappropriate, tone-deaf message is their own fault. Consumers will have to hold corporations accountable for co-opting serious issues and turning them into a poorly-crafted sales pitch that demeans a serious movement, while Pepsi will have to deal with the fall-out and embarrassment.