The View | How Pepsi overstepped the line
‘Pepsi’s marketing gurus probably sold this campaign as being amazingly on trend or maybe, like, real?’
It’s not hard to guess how the Pepsi disaster came about, you know the one where the company spent a fortune devising a media campaign fronted by the reality TV star Kendall Jenner, which was pulled within 24-hours of its launch.
Ms Jenner was seen in all her coolness joining a demonstration for something or other, peace was mentioned, so was a vague call for the people to join a conversation and then there was the moment when she offered a fit looking policeman a can of Pepsi.
Pepsi’s marketing gurus probably sold this campaign as being amazingly on trend or maybe, like, real?
As it turned out the almost immediate internet response to this fatuous advert was pretty real and filled with people clamouring to know why Pepsi thought it was smart to trivialise the various protest movements that have grown in intensity since the election of President Donald Trump.
The beauty of this Pepsi campaign is that its very non-specificity managed to annoy almost everyone who had taken to the streets or was thinking of doing so. The Black Lives Matter movement, for example, were not amused to see Pepsi seeking to cash in on street protests after being provoked by issues rather more profound than soft drink options.