![]() It’s classic cause-related marketing, because in aligning itself with good causes, it boosts sales and brand loyalty.” “What Pepsi was doing was seeking to show its social responsibility. The lyric, although not overtly anti-war, delivered a message of peace and camaraderie,” he explained in 2015.ĭr John Jewell, of Cardiff University, who teaches on advertising, propaganda and political communication, sees a direct connection between the two rivals back again the other way, directly tracing the new Pepsi ad to Coke’s 1971 spot. “I think it was the flower-power era, and most of America was tiring of the Vietnam war. According to its songwriter, Roger Greenaway, using bohemian-looking, racially diverse young people to sing about togetherness did have a point to make. Livelier, active people with a liking for Pepsi-Cola!” This, in turn, inspired perhaps the most famous use of activism in advertising history: Coca-Cola’s “I’d like to buy the world a Coke” ad from 1971. “Just about everyone with the young view of things. “Who is the Pepsi Generation?” asked a voiceover on one of its ads. In an attempt to win over young, broke people that might also resonate with millennials, Pepsi highlighted the fact that it was cheaper than Coke. In 1964, Pepsi first used the slogan “the Pepsi Generation”, which targeted young people and offered its customers an identity based on their allegiance to Pepsi, rather than its competitor, Coca-Cola. I do think that, honestly, no brand would set out to create this sort of response.” “But that is an overly simplistic point of view. What about the idea that all publicity is good publicity? “There is a growing conversation within marketing that outrage is a form of social currency, and that social currency equates to sales,” Kemp says. But in effect it did both: it stood for nothing, with these anodyne signs, and it still created a backlash.”Ġ2:40 Kendall Jenner stars in heavily criticised viral Pepsi ad – video “You get a lot of people saying we’re in a state of perpetual outrage, that brands should always be aware that taking a stand can create a backlash, and that it’s better to stand for something than for nothing. Kemp argues that not only was the ad tone-deaf, it also failed to make any political point at all, co-opting the imagery, without taking a stand. It managed to alienate both sides of an increasingly polarised consumer universe,” says Nicola Kemp, trends editor at advertising trade magazine Campaign, who points out that the ad was made by an inhouse team at Pepsi, which may be why there is a sense that nobody thought to point out its deficiencies before it aired. “It’s a unique skill to have #boycottpepsi trending among both the right and the left. ![]() If there is one area in which the ad succeeded, it was in its ability to unite people across the political spectrum – even Piers Morgan called it “stupefyingly diabolical” and “snowflake claptrap”. Cans and bottles of Pepsi were Photoshopped into key moments of the civil rights movement, and pictures of police brutality were captioned with, “Kendall, please! Give him a Pepsi!”. Charles M Blow, a columnist for the New York Times, tweeted that he would boycott Pepsi products until the brand apologised for “this blasphemy”, comparing the ad with the iconic Black Lives Matter picture, which captured nurse Ieshia Evans being arrested in Baton Rouge, Louisiana in July 2016. The backlash was swift, furious and witty. The crowd party as if they are in the VIP enclosure at Coachella, safe in the knowledge that they have danced their way to a better world. The cop smiles, and does not pepper-spray, beat, shoot or arrest anyone. ![]() A woman in a headscarf photographs her triumph. Jenner approaches the line of friendly, pleasant-looking police officers and hands one a can of fizzy pop. Perhaps they’re fighting for the rights of teenage diaries?) (The cause is not clear, as their banners, in the Pepsi colours, consist of painted love hearts, peace signs and the slogan “Join the conversation”. She rips off her blond wig, smudges her lipstick, casts off her couture and strides out into the crowd, surveying the scene, ascertaining, with the careful eye of a young Angela Davis or Gloria Steinem, what needs to be done to advance the cause. In the two-and-a-half-minute video ad, which the soft drink corporation has now been forced to pull, the most fashionable member of the Kardashian clan is in the middle of a photoshoot when a passing protest march catches her attention.
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