The internet has spoken. It was shaken up and promptly exploded in response to Pepsi’s sugar-coated TV spot – which has now been canned, incidentally. So what are our thoughts on how to stop this from happening again? We believe there are three things we all need to know.
Know your audience
Pepsi were trying to talk to the younger generation. Again. What they neglected to take into account this time: it was never going to be a one-way conversation. Millennials are particularly sensitive to inauthenticity and being patronised. This poses a problem for all brands, but Pepsi didn’t appear to think so. Their conceited portrayal of a protest involved a load of young, clean-cut, smiling ‘activists’ brandishing offensively inoffensive signs like ‘Join the conversation’. And blue. Lots of blue. Their apparent lack of planning was quickly exposed. ‘Pepsi’ was trending on Twitter the day the ad was first aired – and not in a good way.
Know your influencer
Kendall Jenner is a privileged, rich and famous model; born into a television family dynasty and as far away from being ‘the voice of the people’ as one could possibly be. Employing a celebrity influencer can mean leveraging all of their fans and followers, but if Pepsi were going for aspiring young women, they should have done so. The lesson here is that you simply can’t create a piece that is all things to all people.
Know yourself
Our attention spans are so short, we’ll likely forget about this jaw-dropping slip up in a few weeks. We shouldn’t. Marketers must be self-aware and have a true understanding of what their brands stand for. If this ad had come from Wikipedia, it may have been taken more seriously, since they’ve fought to be a champion of inclusive knowledge sharing. But what right did Pepsi have to play in this space? As a global campaign, it worked so hard to be not be offensive to anyone, it had no message. Literally. The picket signs said nothing of substance and the subject of the docile demonstration was never revealed.
But isn’t all publicity good publicity?
There is a growing belief within our industry that outrage is a form of social currency that equates to sales, but that’s an overly simplistic point of view. No brand would activate video content to deliberately create this sort of response. We certainly wouldn’t want to be caught with a Pepsi at the moment.The bad news: Pepsi can’t unite the world.The good news: everyone agrees.
