Crazy Pepsi Protest Commercial- “Worst Ad Ever”？？
In an attempt to draw the attention of politically active young demographic, Pepsi instead was forced to pulled all the ads of “Live for Now Moments Anthem” commercials within one day and the idea of the ads were citied to be “Worst Ad Ever” on the Internet. Thankfully, Pepsi took a quick PR response upon the crisis. However, we can see Pepsi did suffer after the terrible ads when viewing back at its previous stock tendency.
What happened to Pepsi? You might have the same doubts as me when first catching-up with the news. But we may review the previous news first.
How do the Ads come?
On April 4th, 2017, Pepsi’s marketing team launched a new ad for its soft drink, inviting Kendall Jenner to be their models. In the video, Jenner was affected by the protest team happening near her photo shoot. The team were yelling with billboards for “Love”,”Peace” and“Join the Conversation”. So Jenner dropped her blonde wig and joined in the march. At a pivotal moment of the cop-wall, she passed a bottle of Pepsi to one of the grim-faced police officers who then later smiled to get the drink, and the protest team burst into cheering. All of above was captured by a Muslim female journalism.
Ridiculous? Creative? Is she Pepsi?Why Pepsi was on the protest? Is Pepsi a drink for protest? Does Pepsi stand for peace?
Pepsi, what do you want?
The video was soon withdrawn within four hours. Because it was roundly scolded on the Internet. And according to the Twitter search for “Pepsi“, it seems that no one was going to defense for the commercial. While some people thought it an unrealistic video about the real scenes of protest, as most of the protestors could not wear in fresh, and jump cheerfully in a peaceful not bloody atmosphere like what the video showed, others thought it an assault to the Marches before( although it’s multi-cast engaged in street protest, most of them comes from “Black Lives Matter” and Anti-Trump Protests and etc. ), and what Jenner did in the movie might be also a copy idea of Ieshia Evans facing down police in Baton Rouge, Louisiana last July, showing disrespect and cool politically aware of millennials . Luther King’s daughter even wrote a Tweeter said “If only Daddy would have known the power of #Peppsi”.
Here a few Twitters as follows:
Following the release, Pepsi soon withdraw the ads and made an apology to the public on their social accounts.
What do I think of the Ad?
Soda these days is making creditable efforts to sell products to the younger generations. Competing with Coca-Cola’s most famous peace-for-all ads “1971 “I’d like to buy the world a Coke” “I’d Like to Teach the World to Sing” spot, Pepsi previously launched “Pepsi Generation” and “For those who think young” in the 1960s. Till now, as part of the Campaign “Live for now”, Pepsi wanted to make a breakthrough to show the power of the younger generation via the March, as well as to deliver a message of global unity, peace and understanding. Pepsi said in a statement. “We did not intend to make light of any serious issue.”However, it set a wrong positioning strategy to associate the brand with the sensitive political activities.
For a brand, it’s usually important to position itself before creating a campaign. Although the campaign can be closed to the daily issue or events among target audiences, the brand may need do more social listenings before making decisions of a new campaign, avoiding unnecessary misunderstandings and errors. Fortunately, Pepsi came out for a sincere apology at once and avoided the crisis to be spread further. Moreover, it’s also a lesson for the brand to balance the criteria of politicalized campaign carefully enough to avoid the brand being insulted.
But I also saw an interesting review online that Pepsi’s new ad did organize the Internet. In the post, one of the blogger and journalisms said that the most shining points for the ad was to reunite people to hate Pepsi. It’s kind of jokes but I also realize another new powers of Internet without border. Any brand who would like to survive in the digital flows should be aware the challenge as well as the proper use of the ads.
PR or Marketing?
Pepsi is not alone in the brand crisis history on social media. So who will shoulder the main responsible for the digital crisis? Is PR or Marketing?
Definitely, crisis management begins before there is an issue. marketing team should organize the posts to show their attitudes to the public at once to calm audiences down in order to mitigate the loss, for example, to post the official apology and withdraw all the critical products. Moreover, the marketing team might also come up with another new ideas to reposition their product for the following long-term development.
However, as speed shouldn’t replace overall strategy, PR department should play the very most key role in dealing with the crisis. While responsible for the complaints online, PR should also schedule more activities to show the brand’s social responsible senses to regain the trust from the customers. For instance, Pepsi might need to use bloggers and influencers to deliver and rebuilt their social images by global care on younger generations from other positive perspectives and messages, like caring for the women and childs, as well as the global environment.
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